‘Don’t Talk to Me’: Effects of Ideologically Homogeneous Online Groups and Politically Dissimilar Offline Ties on Extremism
September 18, 2023
This study analyzes cross-sectional data obtained from respondents in neo-Nazi online discussion forums and textual data from postings to these forums. It assesses the impact of participation in radical and homogeneous online groups on opinion extremism and probes whether this impact depends on political dissimilarity of strong and weak offline ties. Specifically, does dissimilarity attenuate ...
The Hidden Face of Jihadist Internet Forum Management: The Case of Ansar Al Mujahideen
September 18, 2023
This article offers a descriptive analysis of the private interactions which took place on the jihadist Internet forum known as Ansar Al Mujahideen between 2008 and 2010. The analysis of the non-visible part of the forum contributes to a more robust underpinning of some current assumptions regarding the jihadist Internet infrastructure and its hierarchical dependence ...
The Dark Side of the Web: Italian Right-Wing Extremist Groups and the Internet
September 18, 2023
Focusing on extreme-right organisations in Italy, this article addresses the specific use of the Internet by extremist groups and its potential role for the formation of collective identity, organisational contacts and mobilisation. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organisations, even violent groups. Through the combination of Social Network Analysis (SNA) of web linkages ...
Differential Online Exposure to Extremist Content and Political Violence: Testing the Relative Strength of Social Learning and Competing Perspectives
September 18, 2023
The present study applies Social Learning (Differential Association) Theory to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through new social media (NSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using (a) a paper-and-pencil study among high school students, and (b) a web survey targeting youths between ...
Irresponsible Radicalisation: Diasporas, Globalisation and Long-Distance Nationalism in the Digital Age
September 18, 2023
The growing scholarship on ethnic diasporas has prompted various off-shoots. Two significant directions are the relationship of diasporas with globalisation and their role in the expansion and radicalisation of ethnic conflict. The corporate enthusiasm of the 1990s for globalisation has been followed by sombre reflections on its destructive impact upon a vast array of areas, ...
Linksextreme Medien
September 18, 2023
Linksextreme Medien wollen nicht möglichst objektiv über allgemeine Belange berichten. Sie sind auch keine Wirtschaftsunternehmen, die kundenorientiert Leistungen verkaufen wollen. Sie verfolgen politische Ziele – und bekämpfen die politischen Gegner. ...
Public Lecture by VOX-Pol Research Fellow Nico Prucha: Understanding the ‘Islamic State’ Narratives
September 18, 2023
Dr Prucha discusses how to understand ‘Islamic State’ narratives by analysing their media output. The lecture was organised by VOX-Pol partner institute, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and held at King’s College London on 6 July 2015. It focuses on the symbiotic relationships between ideology, media content and strategic action, and on ...
Analysis of PKK/KONGRA-GEL Websites to Identify Points of Vulnerability
September 18, 2023
The PKK/KONGRA-GEL terrorist group makes extensive use of the internet, notably for propaganda. The prominent PKK websites are listed in a dataset which shows the way these sites relate to each other with links. An overview of their content is given, then various software and analysis tools, notably Unicet, are used to reveal different aspects ...
Modified Frequency-Based Term Weighting Scheme for Accurate Dark Web Content Classification
September 18, 2023
Security informatics and intelligence computation plays a vital role in detecting and classifying terrorism contents in the web. Accurate web content classification using the computational intelligence and security informatics will increase the opportunities of the early detection of the potential terrorist activities. In this paper, we propose a modified frequency-based term weighting scheme for accurate ...
Using KNN and SVM Based One-Class Classifier for Detecting Online Radicalization on Twitter
September 18, 2023
Twitter is the largest and most popular micro-blogging website on Internet. Due to low publication barrier, anonymity and wide penetration, Twitter has become an easy target or platform for extremists to disseminate their ideologies and opinions by posting hate and extremism promoting tweets. Millions of tweets are posted on Twitter everyday and it is practically ...