Prototype and Analytics for Discovery and Exploitation of Threat Networks on Social Media
September 18, 2023
Identifying and profiling threat actors are high priority tasks for a number of governmental organizations. These threat actors may operate actively, using the Internet to promote propaganda, recruit new members, or exert command and control over their networks. Alternatively, threat actors may operate passively, demonstrating operational security awareness online while using their Internet presence to ...
Fanaticism, Racism, and Rage Online: Corrupting the Digital Sphere
September 18, 2023
Fanaticism, Racism, and Rage Online is a critical exploration of digital hate culture and its myriad infiltrations into the modern online community. The book examines radical movements that have emerged both on the fringes of the Internet, as well as throughout the web’s most popular spaces where extremist voices now intermix with mainstream politics and ...
Bookmarks – A manual for combating hate speech online through human rights education (2020 Revised edition)
September 18, 2023
This revised edition of Bookmarks reflects the end of the coordination of the youth campaign by the Council Europe. The campaign may be officially over, but the education and awareness-raising to counter hate speech and promote human rights values remain an urgent task for young people of all ages. The work of the Council of ...
Starting Points for Combating Hate Speech Online
September 18, 2023
Young People Combating Hate Speech Online is a project of the Council of Europe’s youth sector running between 2012 and 2015. The project aims to combat racism and discrimination in their online expression of hate speech by equipping young people and youth organisations with the competences necessary to recognize and act against such human rights ...
Bots, Fake News and The Anti-Muslim Message on Social Media
September 18, 2023
• In this report, we show how recent terror attacks in the UK have been successfully exploited by anti-Muslim activists over social media, to increase their reach and grow their audiences. • Monitoring key anti-Muslim social media accounts and their networks, we show how even small events are amplified through an international network of activists. ...
Children: extremism and online radicalization
September 18, 2023
There can be few greater fears for a parent than their child being contacted by a stranger, indoctrinated with an extreme ideology, and encouraged to join a violent movement, all while accessing the internet from their bedroom. Children’s smartphones and computers may be portals to the most dangerous places on earth. The use of the ...
Predicting Online Extremism, Content Adopters, and Interaction Reciprocity
September 18, 2023
We present a machine learning framework that leverages a mixture of metadata, network, and temporal features to detect extremist users, and predict content adopters and interaction reciprocity in social media. We exploit a unique dataset containing millions of tweets generated by more than 25 thousand users who have been manually identified, reported, and suspended by ...
Who views online extremism? Individual attributes leading to exposure
September 18, 2023
Who is likely to view materials online maligning groups based on race, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, political views, immigration status, or religion? We use an online survey (N = 1034) of youth and young adults recruited from a demographically balanced sample of Americans to address this question. By studying demographic characteristics and online habits ...
Predictors of Viewing Online Extremism Among America’s Youth
September 18, 2023
Exposure to hate material is related to a host of negative outcomes. Young people might be especially vulnerable to the deleterious effects of such exposure. With that in mind, this article examines factors associated with the frequency that youth and young adults, ages 15 to 24, see material online that expresses negative views toward a ...
Cyber Swarming, Memetic Warfare and Viral Insurgency: How Domestic Militants Organize on Memes to Incite Violent Insurrection and Terror Against Government and Law Enforcement
September 18, 2023
In this briefing, we document a recently formed apocalyptic militia ideology which, through the use of memes—coded inside jokes conveyed by image or text—advocates extreme violence against law enforcement and government officials. Termed the ‘boogaloo’, this ideology self-organizes across social media communities, boasts tens of thousands of users, exhibits a complex division of labor, evolves ...