Blog

By Javier Delgado Rivera News coverage of investigations into terrorist attacks raise concerns about whether the media goes too far in reporting police findings that may be of some help to bloodthirsty fundamentalists. Before committing their heinous acts, terrorist-minded individuals will be sure to wipe out all the information on their cell phones after learning ...

The Oxford Internet Institute’s Ian Brown and MIT’s Josh Cowls co-authored the VOX-Pol report entitled Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material, which explores the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and looks into its implications for security, privacy, and human rights. Below, Josh Cowls discusses the report with Bertie ...

By Aabid Shafi ISIS’ social media capabilities are well known. The effectiveness with which the group makes use of social media to recruit new fighters and spread its propaganda has set off an alarm among security agencies around the globe. It has even led to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton terming ISIS the “most ...

By Scott Craig and Emma Llansó The UK government has published a new counter-extremism strategy outlining the steps it intends to take to counter extremist ideologies in British society. In an expansion of earlier efforts designed to prevent people being “drawn into terrorism,” the government now intends to actively challenge non-violent extremism both online and ...

by Haroro Ingram Countering Islamic State “strategic communications” is one of the most pressing national security concerns facing Western governments. Developing more nuanced understanding of the organization’s communications strategy will be crucial to devising effective counter-narrative strategies. Yet popular commentary tends to explain the appeal of Islamic State messaging by pointing to its graphic violence, use ...

by Wasim Ahmed In one of my previous blog posts I outlined a number of software applications that could be used to capture and analyse data from Twitter. In this blog post I outline some of the methodological, ethical, privacy, and copyright issues associated with using Twitter as a data source. Twitter can be used as a ...

by David Mair On Thursday 21st January 2015, al-Shabaab attacked the Lido Beach area of Mogadishu in the heart of Somalia.  The area is regarded as Somalia’s premier tourism destination; where Somalis can relax on white sands and enjoy the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.  Despite being on the Foreign Office no-go list, Lido ...

by Joel Wing In the west, the Islamic State (IS) is usually described as a new type of insurgent group that is exploiting technological advances to spread its message to create a new global brand of jihad that has attracted followers from around the world. Haroro Ingram, a Research Fellow at the Coral Bell School ...

by Andi Rahman Alamsyah People were commenting on social media within moments of the terrorist bombings and shooting on 14 January in Jakarta by attackers linked to Islamic State (IS). Two popular hashtags emerged on Twitter and Facebook: #PrayForJakarta and #KamiTidakTakut, which translates as “We are not afraid”. The Pray-for-something hashtag is a common phrase on ...

by Esther Kersley Last week the new UN privacy chief said UK surveillance was “worse than [George Orwell’s novel] 1984”. In the two years since the Snowden leaks revealed the existence of bulk internet and phone surveillance by US intelligence services and their partners, including the UK, the British government continues to engage in the ...