Joshua Citarella’s 20 Interviews is a survey and in-depth investigation of “young online radical politics” (Joshua Citarella, 20 Interviews) on English-speaking social media in the second half of 2019. Arranged around the Political Compass, whose grid is also used as the front and back covers, Citarella interviewed the owners of twenty different accounts from a spectrum of online political subcultures to give a sense of the general radicalization taking place as well the reasonings, hopes, and imagery the users of these accounts identify with.

The Political Compass is an online survey with multiple questions, the answers to which result in a mapping on a two-axis spectrum between libertarian/authoritarian and economic-left/economic-right. The survey, which has been on the internet since 2001, has been popping up in political memes ever since and is often used as a reference point for positioning oneself and questioning these political positions in general.

Citarella not only uses some of the original compass questions to situate the political view of his interviewees, but also a fixed set of questions to find out what their influences are and how they see the future. The interviews are illustrated by “memes and images found from similar minded accounts, forums and servers” (Joshua Citarella, 20 Interviews) and contextualized by several short texts and an introduction by the author.

The book is produced by Blurb, but only available on Amazon, where it has received some customer reviews.