News
VOX-Pol’s Coordinator Maura Conway Joins Swansea University’s Legal Innovation Lab
August 5, 2020On Friday 31 July it was announced that VOX-Pol Coordinator, Professor Maura Conway, will join the Legal Innovation Lab Wales, an initiative within Swansea University’s Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law. Maura Conway is Professor of International Security in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University (DCU) and Project Coordinator of the ...
Blog
The Role of the Internet in Facilitating Violent Extremism, Part II: Connecting On- and Offline Worlds
July 29, 2020This article is the second of a two-part series. It summarizes a recent study published in Terrorism and Political Violence. Part I is HERE. By Tiana Gaudette, Ryan Scrivens, and Vivek Venkatesh Last week on the Blog, we argued that, while a growing body of evidence suggests that the Internet is a key facilitator of ...
Blog
The Role of the Internet in Facilitating Violent Extremism, Part I: Insights from Former Right-Wing Extremists
July 22, 2020This article is the first of a two-part series. It summarizes a recent study published in Terrorism and Political Violence. Part II is HERE. By Tiana Gaudette, Ryan Scrivens, and Vivek Venkatesh In the past five years, it has become increasingly common for practitioners and policymakers in the western world to draw from the insights ...
Blog
The Effects of Censoring the Far-Right Online
July 15, 2020By Ofra Klein Since 2016, censorship of far-right groups and individuals on social media platforms has been the subject of much public discussion. With the implementation of laws to counter hateful speech, such as the German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) and the EU code of conduct, social media companies are now much more responsible for regulating ...
Blog
Jumanji Extremism? The Potential Role of Gamification and Games in Radicalisation Processes
July 8, 2020By Linda Schlegel The ‘gamification of terror’ has received increased attention in the last years, especially in the aftermath of the right-wing extremist attacks in Christchurch, El Paso and Halle, which were livestreamed by the perpetrators akin to ‘Let’s Play’ streams found in the gaming scene. Previously, ISIS had made headlines, because it used not ...
Blog
The EU’s Terrorist Content Regulation: Concerns about Effectiveness and Impact on Smaller Tech Platforms
July 1, 2020This is the third in a series of posts and responses addressing the EU’s regulation on online terrorist content; the first post is HERE and the second HERE. [Ed.] By Adam Hadley and Jacob Berntsson Terrorist use of the internet is a significant threat that has almost become inseparable from terrorism itself. Terrorist groups use ...
Blog
Blind Faith in Technology Diverts EU Efforts to Fight Terrorism
June 24, 2020This is the second in a series of posts and responses addressing the EU’s regulation on online terrorist content; the first post is HERE and the third HERE. [Ed.] By Chloé Berthélémy and Diego Naranjo After emptying their content moderators offices and sending their employees back home due to health safety guidelines, Facebook and the ...
Blog
False Commentary and Blinkered Perspectives Hampering TCO Progress
June 17, 2020This is the first in a series of posts and responses addressing the EU’s regulation on online terrorist content; the second post is HERE and the third HERE. [Ed.] By Lucinda Creighton Never before has a situation demonstrated such a broad consensus for taking extra measures to regulate content online as the coronavirus has. At the same ...
Blog
Intra-EU Disinformation: the French Website Managed by a Polish Far-Right Network
June 10, 2020By EU DisinfoLab FranceLibre24.net is a site that presents itself as a “French news website”, hiding both the fact that it was created in Poland in July 2019, and that it’s heavily tied to a controversial Polish far-right media network (Najwyższy Czas! & Wolnosc24). Owners of the website almost exclusively publish French-language content on polarising ...
Newsletter
VOX-Pol Newsletter 7(2) June 2020
June 9, 2020Welcome to Volume 7 Issue 2 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 ...