Blog
Conspiracy, Anxiety, Ontology: Theorising QAnon
May 18, 2022
This Blog post is the second—the first is HERE—in a four-part series of article summaries from the EU H2020-funded BRaVE project’s  First Monday Special Issue exploring societal resilience to online polarization and extremism. Read the full article HERE [Ed.].  By James Fitzgerald The rise of QAnon presents researchers with a number of important questions. While emerging literature ...
Blog
The Right-leaning be Memeing: Extremist Uses of Internet Memes and Insights for CVE Design
May 11, 2022
This Blog post is the first in a four-part series of article summaries from the EU H2020-funded BRaVE project’s  First Monday Special Issue exploring societal resilience to online polarization and extremism. The second is HERE. Read the full article HERE [Ed.]. By Inés Bolaños Somoano This post synopsises my article ‘The right-leaning be memeing: Extremist uses ...
News
First Monday Special Issue Published on Resilience to Online Polarisation and Extremism
May 11, 2022
On 2 May 2022, First Monday published a Special Issue exploring societal resilience to online polarisation and extremism, co-edited by Amy-Louise Watkin (VOX-Pol and USW), Vivian Gerrand (Deakin University), and Maura Conway (VOX-Pol and DCU). The seven articles in this special issue were selected from those delivered at a series of workshops undertaken by the ...
Blog
Extreme Wives: A Gender Analysis of Online Extremism—the Case of Jihadi Brides and Tradwives
May 4, 2022
By Marco Farucci The events of January 6th showcased the strength of online communities and their ability to transfer extremist ideologies from the online to the offline world. Online extremism usually takes the form of violent, racist, and misogynistic content on social media. The business models of social media platforms are designed with ‘suggesting mechanisms’ ...
Blog
UK Online Safety Bill: Ambiguous Definitions of Harm Could Threaten Freedom of Speech – Instead of Protecting It
April 27, 2022
By Laura Higson-Bliss The UK government’s much anticipated online safety bill has now been released. The bill seeks to impose a duty of care on companies, such as social media platforms, to remove illegal content, and in some cases, “legal but harmful” content, quickly. Failure to comply will result in heavy fines or, in extreme ...
Blog
Ready, Set, Play: Gaming And (Counter-) Extremism
April 20, 2022
By Linda Schlegel Over the last two years, the potential nexus between gaming and extremism has received a lot of attention. Researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and international organisations such as the EU and the UN have all declared the topic to be a key area of concern. However, surprisingly little is known about how and why extremists ...
News
VOX-Pol Joins the RESOLVE Network
April 14, 2022
VOX-Pol is please to announce that it has become a member of the RESOLVE Network. The RESOLVE Network is a global consortium of researchers, research organizations, policymakers, and practitioners committed to empirically driven, locally defined research on the drivers of violent extremism and sources of community resilience. VOX-Pol joins as a world-leading centre for the ...
Blog
Examining Online Indicators of Extremism Among Violent and Non-Violent Right-Wing Extremists
April 13, 2022
This article summarizes a recent study published in Terrorism and Political Violence. By Ryan Scrivens Although there is an ongoing need for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to identify and assess the online activities of violent extremists prior to their engagement in violence offline, little is empirically known about their online posting patterns generally or ...
News
VOX-Pol Contributes to CoJIT and Tech Against Terrorism Podcasts
April 6, 2022
In the past few weeks, VOX-Pol’s coordinator, Professor Maura Conway, has featured in two podcasts. In the Combating Jihadist Terror podcast, Prof Conway and Dr Anthony Richards, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Royal Holloway, examine to what extent academics and policymakers should be using the term ‘cyberterrorism’, how to further research into online extremism, as ...
Blog
Enhancing Digital and Media Literacy to Counter Polarisation and Extremism
April 6, 2022
By Annukka Kurki and Veera Tuomala Although they have been around since the first newspapers were printed, fake news, disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy narratives seem to be more prominent in our everyday lives than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on an onslaught of new conspiracies and the spread of dangerous misinformation has been ...