DIGISELF: Hacking the Digital Self

Digital disinformation and toxic online narratives have evolved from isolated instances of fake news into sophisticated, identity-driven stimuli that systematically exploit the psychological precarity of youth. While early research foregrounded informational deficits and exposure effects, accumulating evidence shows that susceptibility to harmful content is shaped less by failures of fact-checking than by fast, affect-laden judgments that precede and often preempt reflective reasoning. This project proposes that this dynamic produces a condition of epistemic vulnerability best captured by a novel construct, the Critical Judgment Gap (CJG): the measurable temporal dissociation between emotional arousal in response to a toxic stimulus and the onset of analytical correction. The CJG reframes susceptibility not as a static individual trait but as a dynamic cognitive-affective process that can be empirically operationalized and, critically, reduced through targeted intervention.

The project situates this vulnerability within contemporary processes of identity formation under conditions of socioeconomic instability and digital acceleration. Emerging adults increasingly seek agency, recognition, and coherence in fragmented symbolic environments, heightening receptivity to narratives that promise belonging, status, and masculine validation. A central theoretical contribution is the integration of two domains of toxic content — ideological radicalization through manosphere communities and speculative financial risk through crypto-investing and online gambling — that existing research has treated in isolation. Both domains deploy identical affective architectures of dominance, aspiration, and identity validation; susceptibility mechanisms are therefore shared rather than domain-specific. This cross-toxicity framework opens new avenues for collaborative research across communication studies, social psychology, political science, and public health.