Blog

by Yannick Veilleux-Lepage Although there is nothing new in violent extremist groups quickly adopting new technology, what has hardly any precedent is the breadth of the communication strategy implemented by IS. Not only does IS use new technology to create the content which it releases, it also utilizes new technologies innovatively in the dissemination of ...

VOX-Pol Research Fellow Dr. Nico Prucha, is currently being hosted by ICSR at King’s College London, a VOX-Pol partner institution. On Monday, 6 July, Dr. Prucha delivered an hour-long lecture on the ideological narratives of Islamic States as presented through their online media output at KCL’s Strand Campus. The session was chaired by ICSR’s Dr. ...

VOX-Pol Programme Manager Lisa McInerney is speaking at a meeting of the Radicalisation Awareness Network at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London today. The meeting, ‘Bringing together industry partners and CVE practitioners – Innovative cooperation to counter extremism online’ is being held to engage private sector partners in the counter-narrative challenge and to organise ...

By Joshua Sinai In the United States, Canada and Western Europe, dozens of al Qaeda, al-Shabab- and ISIS-related terrorist plots have been thwarted by government counterterrorism agencies through electronic surveillance of terrorist operatives’ suspicious activities on the Internet. While their activities were likely also monitored “on the ground,” the fact that terrorists of all extremist ...

VOX-Pol Programme Manager Lisa McInerney is participating in Central European University’s CMDS Summer Program on Advanced Topics in Internet Governance, Civil Society and Communication Policy Advocacy. The CMDS Summer Program is being held from 28 June to 4 July at CEU’s School of Public Policy in Budapest. The week-long program includes a range of sessions on ...

VOX-Pol coordinator Dr. Maura Conway contributed to the EU Member States’ Annual Meeting on the UNSCR 1325 on Friday. The ‘Women, Peace and Security in the Context of Violent Extremism and Terrorism’ meeting was held in Brussels. Discussions were based around three broad themes: the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and global review of ...

by Samina Yasmeen The discussions around why young Australian Muslims are leaving home to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq on the side of or against Islamic State (IS) suffer from two kinds of reductionism. First, they assume that the phenomenon of young (or not so young) people leaving their homes to join these terrorist groups is largely ...

VOX-Pol contributed to this week’s [Y] Factor Conference, a Youth Conference organised by the trainees of the European Committee of the Regions in collaboration with CoR services at the end of their traineeship period. The main idea behind [Y] Factor is to tackle the topics and issues that concern young people by bringing together local ...

by Nico Prucha How the Arabic Ideology of Jihadist Movements Targets non-Arab(ic) Online Networks, Part 2 Jihadist narratives are fostered by the increasingly visual nature of online culture. Videos are the most important mouthpiece to show the manifestation and realisation of jihadist creed (‘aqida) and methodology (manhaj) for which they claim to live and die. ...

VOX-Pol participated in a two-day meeting hosted by the Insafe Network of Safer Internet Centres in Prague from 27-28 May. Insafe is a European network of 31 national awareness centres comprising the 27 EU member states and Iceland, Norway, Russia and Serbia. Each of the national centres implement awareness and educational campaigns, runs a helpline, ...