Blog

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’ ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

By Anne Craanen and Charley Gleeson Terrorist use of the internet is a complex and multi-faceted threat which requires an equally nuanced response. Terrorists use a wide ecosystem of tech platforms for a variety of purposes, composed of external (public propaganda dissemination) and internal (operational maintenance) communications. Our analysis shows that within the ecosystem of ...

By the Institute of Strategic Dialogue Research Team On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) researchers have been tracking and monitoring Salafi-jihadists across social media platforms, who look to radicalise and influence lone actor attacks, for over a year. In doing so, ISD has identified a networked community of ...

VOX-Pol has just published Violent Extremism and Terrorism Online in 2021: The Year in Review, authored by Maura Conway (Dublin City University), Amy Louise Watkin (University of the West of Scotland), and Seán Looney (University of Exeter). This year’s report was produced via RAN Policy Support, and funded by the European Commission. About the report The 2021 Year in Review treats developments in ...