Dieser Report analysiert die Netzwerke und Narrative deutschsprachiger rechtsextremer, linksextremer und islamistisch-extremistischer Akteure auf Mainstream- und alternativen Social-Media-Plattformen sowie extremistischen Websites im Kontext der Corona-Pandemie. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen: Extremisten aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz konnten ihre Reichweite seit der Einführung der Lockdown-Maßnahmen vergrößern. ...

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in far-right inspired attacks. In this context, the present article offers an analytical framework for the study of right-wing extremists’ multifaceted and fast-growing activity on the Internet. Specifically, we conceptualize the far-right online presence as a dynamic ecosystem, teasing out four major components that correspond to the different ...

Globalization and international media are potent contributors to the rise of the Islamist global jihad. Widespread digital communication technologies that connect people all over the world are a substantial component of globalization. Over the past three decades, “virtual jihad” has emerged as a potent disseminator of radical religious-political ideologies, instilling fear and fostering instability worldwide. ...

#jagärhar is by far the largest and best-organized collective effort to respond directly to hatred online, anywhere in the world, as far as we know. It is also one of only two civil society efforts against hatred online to have been replicated in numerous other countries. In this detailed account of its efforts– the first ...

Hate speech is a growing concern online, with minorities and vulnerable groups increasingly targeted with extreme denigration and hostility. Why users express hate speech on social media is unclear. This study explores how this hate speech develops on both mainstream and fringe social media platforms; Facebook and Gab. We investigate whether users seek out hostile ...

In this report, we present an empirical cross-national study of supporters of right-wing extremists’ (RWE) and Islamist extremists’ (ISE) activities and interactions on Twitter. The study is based on ethnographic and automatic text and network analyses of data from Belgian, British, Dutch, French, German, Greek and Norwegian female and male Twitter accounts. ...

Between 20 March and 14 September 2020, Moonshot investigated online far-right extremist searches in Bosnia & Herzegovina by analysing at-risk audience engagement with far-right extremist themes. Our results show a significant number of searches were for far-right extremist themes relating to the region’s history of ethnic conflict, as well searches for international far-right memes and ...

The Facebook Redirect Programme (FRP) is designed to combat violent extremism and dangerous organisations by redirecting users who have entered hate or violence-related search queries towards educational resources and outreach groups. A pilot of the programme was launched with delivery partners Life After Hate in May 2019 and Exit Australia in September 2019. It was ...

Extremist groups’ online recruitment mechanisms frequently exploit the wide range of grievances and vulnerabilities experienced by individuals at-risk of radicalisation. While it is widely accepted that mental health and wellbeing play a vital role in resilience to violent extremism, most approaches tend to focus on preventing violent extremism through purely ideological means and are not ...

In this essay, I discuss how the alt-right has brought back into fashion traditional tenets of the reactionary, xenophobic, and often racist far-right, as demonstrated by George Hawley, and how it has managed to make these tenets appear as novel, provocative, and updated to the 21st century U.S. society and digital environment. I argue that ...