Blog

Kate Cantrell, University of Southern Queensland and Susan Hopkins, University of the Sunshine Coast Filmed in a one-take style, Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s new crime drama Adolescence is being hailed by critics as a technical masterpiece. Out now on Netflix, the four-part series follows the fallout surrounding 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) after he ...

VOX-pol is pleased to announce a new report in its publication series: ‘Right- and left-wing violent extremist abuse of digital technologies in South America, Africa and Asia‘. This report, jointly published by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and VOX-Pol, investigates the underexplored phenomenon of right- and left-wing violent extremist groups ...

By Joe Whittaker, Elizabeth Pearson, Ashley A. Mattheis, Till Baaken, Sara Zeiger, Farangiz Atamuradova, & Maura Conway There are two words that will strike fear into the hearts of many researchers of online deviance: “Ethics Committee.” Attend a conference or workshop, it is commonplace to have discussions about bureaucratic nightmares which stifle the ability of ...

Welcome to Volume 12, Issue 4 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. UPCOMING EVENTS The Society for Terrorism Research: 17th Annual International ConferenceConference theme: The Future of Terrorism Research in a Multi-Crisis World The Society for Terrorism Research (STR) is delighted to announce that the 17th Annual International Conference will be held on July 7 and 8, 2025, at the VOX-Pol member institution ...

By Joseph Stabile The US State Department’s 13 January designation of The Terrorgram Collective and three of its leaders serves as the bookend of the now-departed Biden Administration’s efforts to confront white supremacist extremism—a process that began with a presidentially-directed interagency review in January 2021. On its own, the designation carries significant implications for potential ...

By Amelia Cho Introduction The rapid advancement of digital communication technologies has intensified the debate between national security and user privacy. End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is widely regarded as a fundamental tool for protecting digital communications, yet it is also exploited by terrorist organisations to evade surveillance. This blog examines the challenges posed by E2EE in ...

By Colin M. Fisher, UCL Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes in how the company addresses misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Instead of relying on independent third-party factcheckers, Meta will now emulate Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in using “community notes”. These crowdsourced contributions allow users to flag content they ...

By Alastair Reed, Andrew Glazzard, Samantha Treacy Ever since the rapid rise of the so-called Islamic State and its effective use of online propaganda to recruit and radicalize individuals, countering the communication strategies of terrorists and violent extremists has been a top priority for governments and policymakers. Early approaches generally fell into two categories: disrupting ...

Welcome to Volume 12, Issue 3 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. VOX-Pol is now on Bluesky! Follow us for updates @vox-pol.bsky.social. EVENTS Reminder for 2025 C-REX & VOX-Pol Summer School This five-day workshop will be held on 9 – 13 June 2025 at the Center for Research on Extremism at University of Oslo, Norway. The workshop is co-organized by C-REX and VOX-Pol and ...

By David Wells Tariffs might not be the only trade obstacle with Trump’s America. “Censorship” could be the next test. There are multiple explanations for January’s changes in how Meta will moderate content across its platforms, including financial ones, the evolving views of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Meta’s policies simply swaying in line with the political pendulum. ...