A VOX-Pol workshop, organised in collaboration with ICSR, entitled ‘Online Jihadism: Beyond the English-Language Literature’ was hosted at King’s College London on 16 – 17 October.
Contributors included counter-radicalisation experts, anthropologists, political scientists, and Islamic Studies scholars. Over 90 attendees registered for the two-day event. Simultaneous translation was provided in Arabic and French throughout.
Social scientists have approached online jihadism from distinctive perspectives across Europe and the Middle East, depending on the cultural and political context in which this issue has recently been debated. Beyond the English-language literature, researchers have collected and explored different empirical evidence to understand and counter this phenomenon in their country-specific environments.
Despite offering a highly original insight into the field of violent online political extremism, these alternative sources of expertise are hardly relayed in the English-speaking world.
The aim of this workshop was to contribute to bridging this gap by bringing together panels of international experts from Europe and the Middle East to explore some of the findings that have been disseminated in languages other than English.
The workshop began with a networking lunch, which was followed with an overview of VOX-Pol. Seven sessions were held over the two days, covering different questions related to online propaganda, such as how to identify vulnerable audiences, what the relationship between online and offline is, and to what extent the medium impacts the message.
A roundtable session with guest speakers from a range of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, France, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, the UK, and Russia, was held on the second day.
You can view our Storify here of all the Live Tweets from the two days, which used our hashtag #BeyondEng