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By Inger Storm Sandboe and Antara Chakraborthy Introduction Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary on the manosphere has renewed mainstream attention to online subcultures often dismissed as fringe. This coincides with a broader discursive shift: the normalisation of a distinct ‘biological’ vocabulary in manosphere discourse. This rhetoric usually relies on a weak scientific basis, selectively interpreted or ...

We are excited to announce that a brand-new series of videos is now live on the VOX-Pol YouTube Channel! Bringing together leading global experts, practitioners, and the next generation of scholars, these videos tackle some of the most pressing challenges in the online extremist landscape today—from the rise of artificial intelligence to the weaponization of ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 6 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter Catch Up on the 2026 VOX-Pol Lecture Series! We are thrilled to share that the latest 2026 VOX-Pol Lecture Series is now fully recorded and available to view on the VOX-Pol YouTube channel.This curated series brings together world-leading scholars, tech experts, and practitioners to ...

By Saif Tahir Nihilism, defined by the ISD as “an ideology that centres around rejection of all moral and social values with the belief that life is meaningless,” rose to recent prominence after the detection and arrest of members of the decentralised COM and 764 networks who were found coercing minors aged 8-17 into violence. ...

Amarnath Amarasingam, Queen’s University, Ontario Two teenaged gunmen recently opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing a security guard and two staff members before being found with fatal self-inflicted wounds in a nearby vehicle. Like so many recent extremist mass shootings, they livestreamed the attack and, uniquely, even livestreamed their suicides. Police ...

By Kamil Yilmaz In April 2026, Türkiye was shaken by two unprecedented school shootings in the country’s southeastern region. The first attack was carried out on April 14 by Ömer Ket, a 19-year-old former student at Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Siverek, Şanlıurfa, who injured 16 people before dying by suicide. ...

Hosted at Swansea University and attended by 250+ delegates from countries around the world, the TASM Conference is one of the leading international conferences on extremist and terrorist use of online platforms. Attended by a wide range of stakeholders, including tech companies, governments, law enforcement, regulators, civil society and researchers from many different academic disciplines, the ...

The Meta Oversight Board’s Advisory Opinion on Global Community Notes Rollout By Yohannes Eneyew Ayalew & Maria O’Sullivan Meta is a powerful global company, operating social media platforms that shape public opinion and influence elections. However, the company’s attempts to counter false or misleading information on its platforms has been the subject of widespread criticism ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 5 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. There is just over one month to go until the TASM (Terrorism and Social Media) Conference, which VOX-Pol is proud to co-organise. TASM is a collaborative, multistakeholder event. As well as more than 80 papers from academic researchers, there are many other sessions for attendees ...

By Bo Min Keum First: why history? Incel subculture did not start misogynistic or violent. This has been largely acknowledged. What’s less understood is how exactly celibacy came to be about misogyny and violence over time. Understanding this history matters today because it shows that radicalization is not a unilateral outcome of online platforms or ...