Identity-scaffolded epistemologies: adopting non-normative beliefs online through collective information bias

Online radicalization thrives not merely on biased individuals but on biased groups. This paper reframes information bias in online communities as a collective epistemology that can sustain non-normative belief dispositions, such as conspiracy mentality and cavalier humor beliefs. We conceptualize identity-scaffolded epistemic style as group-based information bias that is socially sustained by online social identity and homophily. In an online survey of N = 827 German-speaking social media users aged 18-30, we asked participants about their use of different online environments as news sources (traditional channels, social media, messenger apps and gaming spaces), thus contextual proxies for social identification and homophily, which in turn were assumed to foster information bias as a core component of recent conceptualizations of echo chambers. Results demonstrate that, across a variety of online platforms and spaces, this identity-scaffolded bias was robustly associated with conspiracy mentality and cavalier humor beliefs, but not anti-migration attitudes, which, in contrast, was correlated with political orientation. This suggests an important distinction between ideology as the content of belief and identity-scaffolded epistemic style as a socially distributed mode of validation. Our findings highlight epistemic biases as a socially embedded mechanism and a potential proximal correlate of online radicalization, foremost in collective online information environments, such as messenger apps and gaming environments.