Blog

By Tim Legrand, Nathan Manning, and Melissa-Ellen Dowling Young people worldwide are increasingly exposed to violent ideas and ideologies in web-based communities. According to national security agencies, children as young as 12 are adopting extremist beliefs, folding issues of child safeguarding into national security concerns. While we know that exposure to extremist ideologies in online ...

Dougal Sutherland, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington A new report from New Zealand’s Classification Office has revealed how young people are being exposed to harmful content online and what it is doing to their mental health. The Classification Office spoke with ten different groups of young people aged between 12 and 25 ...

The recent VOX-Pol webinar ‘Right- and left-wing violent extremist abuse of digital technologies in South America, Africa and Asia‘ is now available to watch on YouTube. This webinar, held on Wednesday 18 June 2025, accompanies the report of the same name, which is available to read online and for free on the VOX-Pol Publications page. ...

By Andrew Glazzard The acclaimed Netflix drama Adolescence, released on Netflix in March 2025, has generated exceptional volumes of commentary about what it says about being a youth in the technologically enriched Britain of the 2020s. Kate Cantrell and Susan Hopkins, in an article written for The Conversation and republished on the VoxPol blog, summarise ...

The 2025 AVERT International Research Symposium is an in-person event taking place on 24-26 November 2025 at Deakin University’s Deakin Downtown Campus, Melbourne, Australia. Overseas presenters can register to present online via Zoom. This year, AVERT is collaborating with VOX-Pol and the Terrorism and Social Media (TASM) Conference to deliver this year’s Symposium: Signal or noise? Navigating the changing nature of violent ...

By Bo Min Keum & Richard Frank   N.B. Please be aware that this post contains slurs hostile to women, which some readers may find offensive and distressing. Reader discretion is therefore advised. (Ed.). Incel research is often conducted from the outside looking in. We were interested in how someone who has left and holds insider ...

Welcome to Volume 12, Issue 6 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. UPCOMING EVENTS You are invited to a VOX-Pol webinar taking place on Wednesday 18 June 2025, starting at 15:00 (UK time). Register to attend by emailing info@voxpol.eu. This webinar accompanies the recently published United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and VOX-Pol joint report: Right- and left-wing ...

By Stephane J. Baele The rise of “composite” extremism – and of its classifications Over the past few years, cases of violence apparently inspired by unclear or hybrid ideological motivations seem to have multiplied in OECD countries, prompting scholarly debates, law-enforcement worries, and, more recently, political declarations. Particularly striking or lethal instances that receive significant ...

VOX-Pol Next Generation Network Conference 2025 Hosted by Charles University, Prague September 25-26th, 2025 We are pleased to announce the VOX-Pol Next Generation Network Conference, a community of early-career researchers (ECRs) working on issues related to violent online extremism in its many forms. The conference will be held September 25-26th, 2025 at Charles University in ...

By Stuart Macdonald In a recent article, co-authored with Jonathan Hall KC, I made the argument that it is possible to disseminate terrorist propaganda to the public in (what may be regarded by some as) private online spaces. Here, I outline this argument and consider its relevance to the EU’s Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation. ...