Blog

On 9 March, 2018 VOX-Pol Coordinator Prof. Maura Conway presented a keynote on the issue of ‘Online Radicalisation: Then and Now’ at London Grid for Learning’s (LGfL) inaugural safeguarding conference. In her keynote, Maura outlined the significant changes observed in extremist recruitment, including that of so-called ‘Islamic State’ and the extreme right, over the past number of ...

On 7 March, 2018 VOX-Pol Coordinator Prof. Maura Conway gave evidence to the UK House of Lords International Relations Committee.  The meeting was hosted by the Chairman of the Select Committee Lord Howell of Guildford in the Palace of Westminster.  The purpose of the meeting was to gather opinions on the changes wrought by digital technologies in the international system, particularly the role of the Internet and its ...

This is the second in a two-part series; part one is HERE. By Anne Speckhard & Ardian Shajkovci Last week’s Blog post described ICVSE’s efforts directing counter narratives into the ISIS-dominated Internet space. This post discusses the ethics of attempting such interventions. As in all our work, our research ethics for Internet interventions with ISIS ...

This is part one of a two-part series; the second part is HERE. By Anne Speckhard, Ardian Shajkovci, Lorand Bodo & Haris Fazliu It is estimated that of the 38,000 foreign fighters who have joined Sunni militant groups, such as ISIS and al-Nusra, in Iraq and Syria, upwards of 875 have originated from the Balkans, ...

By Maura Conway and Michael Courtney Jihadi magazines have a long pedigree, are the subject of extensive media coverage and scholarly analysis,[1] and are still easily accessible online. In a recent book chapter, ‘Online Jihadi Instructional Content: The Role of Magazines,’ Conway, Parker, and Looney,  focused on the instructional content, both text and images, published in ...

VOX-Pol released its Violent Extremism and Terrorism Online in 2017: The Year in Review today, 20 February 2018. This is the second publication in the Year in Review series following the Year in Review 2016. The report treats developments in the violent extremist and terrorist online scene(s) and responses to them in the 12 month period ...

Welcome to Vol. 5 Iss. 1 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. This is VOX-Pol’s fifth year in operation; thanks for supporting us over the last four years. 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 ...

By Ryan Scrivens and Garth Davies Violent extremists and those who subscribe to radical beliefs have left their digital footprints online since the inception of the World Wide Web. Notable examples include Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist convicted of killing 77 people in 2011, who was a registered member of a white supremacy web forum and had ties ...

We have published a number of recent Blog posts–see HERE, HERE, and HERE–that address issues around content regulation and intermediary liability. We therefore thought the below would be a timely intervention. The piece is excerpted from Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society’s Law, Borders, and Speech Conference Proceedings Volume, where it appears as an appendix. ...

On 7-8 February, VOX-Pol Programme Manager, Lisa McInerney, participated in the EU’s  Radicalisation Awareness Network’s (RAN) Communication and Narratives Working Group latest meeting in Vienna, Austria. The meeting is focused on how research and evidence-based psychological and neuroscientific insights can be translated into practical information and tools to help practitioners develop more effective alternative and counter-narrative ...