Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain "When people think of extremists, they tend to think of neo-Nazis," said Francesco Campisi, a lecturer at Université de Montréal's School of Criminology. "But there are many other fringe groups that may not be violent yet can give rise to extremism." For his doctoral dissertation , Campisi examined the online presence of far-right groups, including QAnon, a conspiracy-theory mill that emerged in the United States in the late 2010s and gained prominence during the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021. "It's an unusual group that's hard to define, but it was probably a precursor to what we are seeing under Trump," said Francis Fortin, a professor in UdeM's School of Criminology. QAnon is a nebulous organization with no hierarchical structure. "It's an information ecosystem," Fortin said. "It is structured in part by the discussions." Campisi and Fortin examined one specific online strategy used by QAnon: the hijacking of hashtags on X (formerly Twitter).…