The development of social media technologies has had a significant impact on individuals, organizations and societies. However, social media has not only affected people and communities, but also terrorist organizations have started to use social media platforms effectively. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS ) is one such group that actively utilizes social media. ...

ISIS has seemingly been successful in mobilizing advocates from heterogenous backgrounds. Such diversity is symptomatic of the organization’s heavy investment in strategic messaging and identity construction to gain legitimacy. This study examined the multimodal discursive properties of ISIS’s narrative in its communique, Dabiq. It undertook a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the representation of in-group and ...

The approach from the far-right in producing and disseminating visual propaganda has allowed for a persistent online presence to be maintained, despite efforts to remove extremist and hateful content. This chapter will critically explore the academic literature which considers how far-right actors are taking advantages of the affordances of online communication routes to spread visual ...

The twenty-first century’s development of the Internet has led to a significant shift in contemporary communication (Zelin in The state of global jihad online: a qualitative, guantitative, and cross-lingual analysis. New America Foundation, 2013). While the Internet is widely utilised in everyday life to distribute and share information, it has also created an environment in ...

This paper is based on an experiment-based study carried out in the first half of 2023, which aimed to understand how terrorist organizations can potentially exploit artificial intelligence. It discusses the risks of using AI to produce and disseminate propaganda, as well as verifies whether it can be used to facilitate access to terrorist content. ...

This paper reviews online gender-based violence (OGBV) as existing within a continuum of (on- and offline) violence, emphasising the connections with different extremist ideologies, including the dissemination of terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC). It aims to prioritise a gender perspective in responding to TVEC so that social media platforms can better intervene in and ...

Considerable attention has been paid by researchers to social media platforms, especially the ‘big companies’, and increasingly also messaging applications, and how effectively they moderate extremist and terrorist content on their services. Much less attention has yet been paid to if and how infrastructure and service providers, further down ‘the tech stack’, deal with extremism ...

Digital media platforms have been implicated in the recent rise of far-right extremism. This study proposes that these platforms afford emotional processes that lie at the core of far-right movements. Drawing on Randall Collins’ interactional framework and the literature on cultural trauma, we investigate the emotional processes triggered by traumatic experiences within far-right online communities. ...

This article examines the problem of hate and toxic behavior in gaming. Videogames have risen to become a dominant cultural form, seeing significant increases in players, playtime, and revenue. More people are playing games than ever before, broadening “gamers” into a highly diverse demographic. Yet this rise has been accompanied by a growing recognition of ...

Crowdfunding platforms remain understudied as conduits for ideological struggle. While other social media platforms may enable the expression of hateful and harmful ideas, crowdfunding can actively facilitate their enaction through financial support. In addressing such risks, crowdfunding platforms attempt to mitigate complicity but retain legitimacy. That is, ensuring their fundraising tools are not exploited for intolerant, violent or hate-based purposes, yet ...