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This is a reminder regarding the final two sessions of VOX-Pol’s Lunch Briefing Series. On Wednesday, 2 December, Dr. Nico Prucha (VOX-Pol Fellow, ICSR) will discuss ‘Online Environments and the Violent Jihad,’ with a particular focus on the content produced and disseminated in the wake of the Paris Attacks. For more details, click HERE. The final Briefing will take place on ...

by Athina Karatzogianni One of the key issues the West has had to face in countering Islamic State (IS) is the jihadi group’s mastery of online propaganda, seen in hundreds of thousands of messages celebrating the atrocities against civilians and spreading the message of radicalisation. It seems clear that efforts to counter IS online are missing ...

Authors Ian Brown and Josh Cowls Abstract This report draws on insights from representatives of civil society, law enforcement and industry groups to offer fresh perspectives on the policing of extremist material online. Evidently, the Internet now serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold ...

by Robyn Torok While the average person was getting on with life in Paris before last Friday’s terror bombings and shootings, Twitter threads in Arabic from the Middle East were urging for attacks to be launched upon coalition forces in their home countries. “Advance, advance – forward, forward” they said, regarding Paris. Iraqi forces had ...

Authors Paul Gill, Emily Corner, Amy Thornton, and Maura Conway Abstract Using a unique dataset of 227 convicted UK-based terrorists, this report fills a large gap in the existing literature. Using descriptive statistics, we first outline the degree to which various online activities related to radicalisation were present within the sample. The results illustrate the ...

Welcome to Vol. 2, Iss. 4 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. VOX-Pol is happy to announce the publication of its first research report earlier this month, which measures online behaviours of convicted UK terrorists. We will release another report on 23 November examining the political, legal, and ethical constraints of policing the Internet for violent extremist content. If ...

by Elizabeth Pearson In the past two years, the so-called Islamic State (IS) has made Twitter its own, many of its supporters even describing the social media forum as an IS ‘wilayat’ or ‘province’. As academics and policy-makers alike become increasingly aware of the role of the online environment in radicalisation, the use of Twitter ...

by J.M Berger The world continues to deal with the offline consequences of how ISIS works online, hunting among the fringes of society for those rare individuals who can be convinced to act on its behalf. Its success comes in part from volume – social media makes it possible to sift efficiently through more potential ...

VOX-Pol was represented by our Coordinator, Dr. Maura Conway (DCU), at Club De Madrid’s global policy dialogue ‘Madrid +10: Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism‘, which took place in Madrid, Spain, from 27 – 28 October, 2015. VOX-Pol partner, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London, was co-convenor of ...

Launching 4 November 2015 at the VOX-Pol Lunch Briefing Series In London, on November 4 2015, Dr. Paul Gill will present findings from his co-authored research report entitled ‘What are the Roles of the Internet in Terrorism? Measuring Online Behaviours of Convicted UK Terrorists’, based upon recent VOX-Pol funded research. This report will be formally launched ...