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Book Review by Andrew Glazzard Terrorism is, as we know, propaganda in word and deed. Terrorists communicate symbolically (through their choice of targets, or their methods of attack) as well as directly through statements, stories and appeals. There is, therefore, no shortage of studies  addressing how terrorists exploit mass media, from the made-for-television spectaculars of ...

By Charlie Winter Since Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in October, there has been much conjecture about how its changes in policy, particularly in relation to the reinstatement of accounts belonging to prominent white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, will make Twitter a new core arena for extreme right wing (ERW) messaging and outreach. Notably, this ...

By Amanda R. Champion, David M. Hattie, Devinder Khera, Richard Frank, & Cory L. Pedersen In the aftermath of Alek Minassian’s 2018 van attack in Toronto, Canada, that claimed the lives of 11 individuals, a reporter from The Telegraph stated that Minassian drove a rented van into a crowd of pedestrians on a major downtown ...

By Markus Luczak-Roesch, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as the new sole private owner has delivered plenty of material for memes. Ironically, much of the debate about Twitter is still happening on the platform itself, sometimes with Musk jumping into the conversations personally. At the same time, ...

By David Wells Policing online hate speech currently falls into a murky space shared between governments and big tech. The past five years have seen the creation of a latticework of overlapping methodologies to identify and remove online terrorist content and hate speech. Most notably, a significant proportion of these efforts have effectively been privatised ...

By Dr James Fitzgerald, Dr R. Marie Santini, and Dr Débora Salles This piece showcases the work of new VOX-Pol member, NetLab[1]. Its purpose is to provide readers with an initial understanding of a coordinated disinformation infrastructure that has flourished in Brazil, with a focus on how it interacted with the first round vote of ...

Welcome to Volume 9, Issue 4 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. RESEARCHERS: THE REASSURE PROJECT WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU! Two years ago, the REASSURE (Researcher Security, Safety and Resilience) project team began documenting the experiences of academic researchers of online extremism and terrorism. Their report on online extremism and terrorism researchers’ security, safety, and resilience ...

By Jonathan Pieslak In a recent VOX-Pol blog post, I outlined how online digital music contributed to the decline of the American racist skinhead movement. More than the aging-out of members or the recruitment of prospects to other groups, the subculture faced significant challenges brought about by the collapse of physical music media and the ...

This article was originally published in English on GNET, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. By Laurence Bindner and Raphael Gluck, Le journal de bord de Payton Gendron, auteur de l’attentat de Buffalo le 14 mai 2022 ayant causé la mort de 10 personnes et blessé trois autres, est un document important dans la ...

By Garth Davies, Simon Fraser University and Sarah Negrin, Simon Fraser University The Canadian government is currently holding consultations on a new online hate bill. This bill would update Bill C-36, which addresses hate propaganda, hate crimes and hate speech; the amendment died following the election call last year. Hate propagated on social media and ...