Race, Religion, or Culture? Framing Islam between Racism and Neo-Racism in the Online Network of the French Far Right
September 18, 2023
When debates about Islam acquire importance in the public sphere, does the far right adhere to traditional racist arguments, risking marginalization, or does it conform to mainstream values to attain legitimacy in the political system? Focusing on the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, I explore the framing of Islam, discussing how the ...
Mobilizing extremism online: comparing Australian and Canadian right-wing extremist groups on Facebook
September 18, 2023
Right-wing extremist groups harness popular social media platforms to accrue and mobilize followers. In recent years, researchers have examined the various themes and narratives espoused by extremist groups in the United States and Europe, and how these themes and narratives are employed to mobilize their followings on social media. Little, however, is comparatively known about ...
The Alt Right Twitter Census
September 18, 2023
The so-called ‘alt-right’ is an amorphous but synchronized collection of far-right people and movements, an umbrella label for a number of loosely affiliated social movements around the world, although its centre of gravity is in the United States. Many factors have contributed to the alt-right’s rise to prominence, but one of the most visible is ...
The Use of Social Media by United States Extremists
September 18, 2023
Emerging communication technologies, and social media platforms in particular, play an increasingly important role in the radicalization and mobilization processes of violent and non-violent extremists (Archetti, 2015; Cohen et al., 2014; Farwell, 2014; Klausen, 2015). However, the extent to which extremists utilize social media, and whether it influences terrorist outcomes, is still not well understood ...
Delivering Hate : How Amazon’s Platforms Are Used to Spread White Supremacy, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia and How Amazon Can Stop It
September 18, 2023
Amazon has been called the “everything store,” but today it is much more than just a store, with publishing, streaming, and web services businesses. Its reach and infuence are unparalleled: Most U.S. online shopping trips begin at Amazon, Amazon dominates the U.S. e-book business, and the company’s web services division has over 60 percent of ...
UK Insight Report Volume 4 Summary
September 18, 2023
The OCCI Insight Reports equip NGO partners on an ongoing basis with the knowledge needed to develop effective, targeted campaigns. Without access to in-depth, data-driven insights into the fast-evolving landscape of extremist and terrorist propaganda, narratives and networks, it is impossible to mount a proportional targeted response. Additionally, the reports highlight recommendations for future counterspeech ...
Using Internet search data to examine the relationship between anti-Muslim and pro-ISIS sentiment in U.S. counties
September 18, 2023
Recent terrorist attacks by first- and second-generation immigrants in the United States and Europe indicate that radicalization may result from the failure of ethnic integration—or the rise of intergroup prejudice in communities where “home-grown” extremists are raised. Yet, these community-level drivers are notoriously difficult to study because public opinion surveys provide biased measures of both ...
Who Dissemnates Rumiyah? Examining the Relative Influence of Sympathiser and Non-Sympathiser Twitter Users
September 18, 2023
This paper was presented at the 2nd European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) Advisory Group conference, 17-18 April 2018, at Europol Headquarters, The Hague. The views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of Europol. In a speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017, the U.K. Prime Minister ...
Online discontent: comparing Western European far-right groups on Facebook
September 18, 2023
Far-right groups increasingly use social media to interact with other groups and reach their followers. Social media also enable ‘ordinary’ people to participate in online discussions and shape political discourse. This study compares the networks and discourses of Facebook pages of Western European far-right parties, movements and communities. Network analyses of pages indicate that the ...
Down the (White) Rabbit Hole: The Extreme Right and Online Recommender Systems
September 18, 2023
In addition to hosting user-generated video content, YouTube provides recommendation services, where sets of related and recommended videos are presented to users, based on factors such as co-visitation count and prior viewing history. This article is specifically concerned with extreme right (ER) video content, portions of which contravene hate laws and are thus illegal in ...