News
Watch the VOX-Pol Webinar on ‘Terrorism Informatics’
April 7, 2021In March 2021, VOX-Pol published four Blog posts on the topic of ‘Terrorism Informatics’. The series covers A Framework for Researchers, Identifying Extremist Networks, Analysing Extremist Content, and Predicting Extremist Behaviour. The Blogs are written by Matti Pohjonen, a Researcher for a Finnish Academy-funded project on Digital Media Platforms and Social Accountability (MAPS) and VOX-Pol Fellow. Following the four ...
Blog
(Young) Women’s Usage of Social Media and Lessons for Preventing Violent Extremism
April 7, 2021Want to submit a blog post? Click here. This Blog post summarises a conclusion paper from the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network. By Jordy Krasenberg and Julia Handle The perspective on the role of (young) women in extremism has changed over the last years towards better understanding of how women radicalise, how they are recruited, and ...
Blog
Meet BreadTube, the YouTube Activists Trying to Beat the Far-right at Their Own Game
March 31, 2021Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Alexander Mitchell Lee YouTube has gained a reputation for facilitating far-right radicalisation and spreading antisocial ideas. However, in an interesting twist, the same subversive, comedic, satiric and ironic tactics used by far-right internet figures are now being countered by a group of leftwing YouTubers known as “BreadTube”. By making videos ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part IV: Predicting Extremist Behaviour
March 24, 2021This is the fourth and final in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE the second is HERE the third is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The previous cluster of methods looked at in the blog post series included methods developed to extrapolate insight from the content produced online and on social ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part III: Analysing Extremist Content
March 17, 2021This is the third in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE and the second is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The previous blog posts looked at the costs and benefits of using network analysis to identify extremist networks. It suggested that one challenge in such network analysis-based research approaches is ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part II: Identifying Extremist Networks
March 10, 2021This is the second in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The first blog post in this series explored how researchers interested in computational methods can assess the trade-off between the validity of the methods used and the potentially adverse social costs of using them in ...
Newsletter
VOX-Pol Newsletter 8(1) March 2021
March 9, 2021Welcome to Volume 8 Issue 1 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. If you have colleagues or friends who may be interested in the content of our newsletter, or any events or research carried out by VOX-Pol, please forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe via our website. Follow us on Twitter @VOX_Pol for live updates ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part I: A Framework for Researchers
March 3, 2021This series of four blog posts builds on discussions had during the ‘Inside the Black Box of “Terrorism Informatics”: A Cost-benefit Analysis of Using Computational Techniques in Violent Online Political Extremism Research’ workshop organised by VOX-Pol in 2018. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen One of the most pressing challenges in research on violent online extremism is ...
Blog
Moderating Terrorist and Extremist Content
February 24, 2021Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Joan Barata According to the latest figures provided by Facebook, 99,6% of the content actioned on grounds of terrorism (mostly related to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates) was found and flagged before any user reported it. This being said, it is also worth noting ...
Blog
The Tech Industry and the Regulation of Online Terrorist Content: What Do Law Enforcement Think?
February 17, 2021Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Stuart Macdonald and Andrew Staniforth The importance of tackling online terrorist propaganda is well-accepted, as is the important role of social media companies in responding to this challenge. In this short piece, we report some initial findings from a wider project on cooperation between social media ...