From Gaming to Hating: Extreme-Right Ideological Indoctrination and Mobilization for Violence of Children on Online Gaming Platforms
September 18, 2023
As a consequence of numerous extreme-right terror attacks in which the perpetrators posted their manifestos and attack life streams on online platforms adjacent to the video gaming community, as well as radicalized within that environment to a significant degree (e.g., Christchurch, New Zealand; Halle, Germany), increasing scholarly and policymaker interest is focusing on far-right radicalization ...
Discussing the Islamic State on Twitter
September 18, 2023
This book explores how ordinary Arab-speaking social media users have reacted to propaganda from the Islamic State, rather than how IS propaganda has targeted ordinary users, thus providing a change in perspective in the literature. The authors provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the Arabic discourse on IS, encompassing all phases of the ...
Rethinking Online Radicalization
September 18, 2023
This article seeks to re-ontologize online radicalization. Individuals becoming terrorists after being exposed to online content have become a prescient concern for academics, policy makers, and journalists. Existing theoretical contributions to the concept have assumed that there are two ontological domains—online and offline—that can be meaningfully separated. This article will draw from several arguments from ...
Onlife Extremism: Dynamic Integration of Digital and Physical Spaces in Radicalization
September 18, 2023
This article argues that one should consider online and offline radicalization in an integrated way. Occasionally, the design of some counter-measure initiatives treats the internet and the “real” world as two separate and independent realms. New information communication technologies (ICTs) allow extremists to fuse digital and physical settings. As a result, our research contends that ...
Breaking the Building Blocks of Hate: A Case Study of Minecraft Servers
September 18, 2023
The online game Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, has amassed 141 million active users since it was launched in 2011. It is used in school communities, among friend groups and even has been employed by the U.N. Despite its ubiquity as an online space, little has been reported on how hate and harassment manifest in Minecraft, ...
The Role of Translation in ISIS Propaganda: International Online Radicalization Methods and Its Effect on Extremism in Indonesia
September 18, 2023
This research aims to compile data and information that will contribute to understanding the online radicalization phenomenon through translation. There are many studies on using the internet and propaganda in a terrorism context. However, only a handful studied the correlation between translation and terrorism propaganda, especially in Indonesia. There was little discussion on the role ...
Two Sides of the Same Coin? A Largescale Comparative Analysis of Extreme Right and Jihadi Online Text(s)
September 18, 2023
This article describes and discusses a comparative semiotic analysis of online text collected from eight extreme right websites and four violent jihadi groups’ online magazines. The two datasets, which comprise just over 1 million words each, were analyzed using LIWC software. The core issues explored were the shared and different linguistic patterns used among extreme ...
Investigative Report on the role of online platforms in the tragic mass shooting in Buffalo on May 14, 2022
September 18, 2023
The mass shooting in and around the Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York on May 14, 2022 that claimed the lives of ten individuals and injured three others was all the more horrific because of the white supremacist ideological motivation that fueled it and the shooter’s meticulous planning. The disturbing reality is that this ...
The Role of Perceived Injustice and Need for Esteem on Incel Membership Online
September 18, 2023
Incels – a term that stands for “involuntary celibates”—is a subculture of men connected by their inability to obtain romantic and sexual relationships. As a group known for real-world violent attacks, understanding the drivers of online membership offers valuable insight into these vulnerable men. The current study used inductive qualitative analysis of over 8,000 posts ...
The Role of Financial Technologies in US-Based ISIS Terror Plots
September 18, 2023
This study explores how terrorists use financial technologies in their plots. Using a database of 231 US-based Islamic State actors, it analyses how they move money and make purchases, as well as whether the use of technology affects success. Fundamentally, terrorists opt for simplicity; there is little evidence of sophisticated financial plots. Terrorists tend to use ...