Blog

This week’s Blog post is the full text of Max Hill QC’s, the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, keynote speech from last week’s TASM conference at Swansea University. The speech was widely reported on in media, including in The Guardian and The Times. Ed. By Max Hill There can be no doubt  that social media plays ...

By Glenda Cooper Some of the most powerful stories about the atrocity in recent Manchester have been told online: whether pictures of the missing, the videos taken in the aftermath or the hashtags such as #roomformanchester or #acityunited showing the city’s resilience. But there are those who have also felt under pressure from journalists. Twitter ...

By Molly Land In the wake of the recent attacks in Manchester and London, British Prime Minister Theresa May has called on social media companies to eliminate “safe spaces” online for extremist ideology. Despite losing the majority in the recent election, she is moving forward with plans to regulate online communications, including in cooperation with ...

VOX-Pol and IFSH’s Dr. Daniela Pisoiu participated in the DPT-Institute for Applied Prevention Research and National Center for Crime Prevention’s conference on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) on 17-18 June 2017 in Hanover, Germany. The conference focuses on rigorously evaluating the impact of preventive CVE programs and measures. The organisers argue there is a need for ...

Our new edited volume Terrorists’ Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response was published on 10 June. The book presents revised versions of a selection of papers delivered at the jointly VOX-Pol and Cyberterrorism Project-organised NATO Advanced Research Workshop  on ‘Terrorists’ Use of the Internet’ held at Dublin City University, Ireland in June 2016. A ...

This post is Part 2 of 2. Click here for Part 1 By Ahmet S. Yayla & Anne Speckhard Reaching out on to ISIS members via Telegram channels is a significant challenge for beginners. First of all, as the Telegram application is installed, the application copies all the contact numbers on one’s cell phone and connects the ...

By Ahmet S. Yayla & Anne Speckhard ISIS has been the most successful terrorist organization in history using social media and the Internet for distributing its propaganda, dissemination of its news and more importantly to communicate. There is no doubt that the frequency and quality of ISIS posts on the Internet, including their videos, memes ...

On 15 May 2017 VOX-Pol’s Coordinator, DCU’s Prof. Maura Conway, gave a keynote address at Dublin’s Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), “Ireland’s leading think tank on European and International affairs.” In her address, Prof. Conway detailed the development of IS’s online strategy from 2014 to the present, with a particular focus on online-offline ...

The mobilisation of women for the jihadist cause emerged in Spain within the framework of the current mobilisation in Western Europe linked to the conflict in Syria and Iraq and the appearance of the so called Islamic State (IS) as a new vanguard of global terrorism. The explicit call from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to women ...

By Jim Killock In a report published last month by the Home Affairs Select Committee brands social media companies as behaving irresponsibly in failing to remove extremist material. It takes the view that the job of removing illegal extremist videos and postings is entirely the responsibility of the companies, and does not envisage a role for courts ...