As the field of terrorism studies evolves, there continues to be increasing interest in how the Internet and social media platforms are impacting extremist groups, militant movements, and individual radicalisation to violence. Especially with the rise of the Islamic State, and the migration of tens of thousands of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq, there ...

It is no surprise to come across information or video on social or mainstream media that was posted by a terrorist organisation like Al-Shabaab. In this regard, researchers have attempted to answer the question of what terrorist organisations aim to achieve by gaining a strong foothold in cyberspace. This article explores the evolution of Al-Shabaab ...

Crafted as an open communication platform characterized by high anonymity and minimal moderation, Telegram has garnered increasing popularity among activists operating within repressive political contexts, as well as among political extremists and conspiracy theorists. While Telegram offers valuable data access to research non-institutionalized activism, scholars studying the latter on Telegram face unique theoretical and methodological ...

As efforts to identify and remove online terrorist and violent extremist content have intensified, concern has also grown about so‐called lawful but awful content. Various options have been touted for reducing the visibility of this borderline content, including removing it from search and recommendation algorithms, downranking it and redirecting those who search for it. This ...

This research paper examines and assesses how members of the Somali jihadi insurgent group al-Shabaab have attempted to influence the mass media for strategic communications purposes. Using the group’s activities between the years 2005 and 2017 as a case study, this paper asserts that al-Shabaab’s attempts to influence the mass media for news coverage purposes, ...

On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform. Given findings of prior research on moderation and hate speech in online communities, the promise of less ...

Approaches for strategically countering or providing alternatives to hate speech and extremism online have evolved substantively in the last ten years. Technological advancement and a generation of young activists who have been socialized as digital natives have facilitated a maelstrom of both hate-based extremist content and attempts to counter this material in different guises and ...

Scholarship has highlighted the rise of political influencer networks on YouTube, raising concerns about the platform’s propensity to spread and even incentivize politically extreme content. While many studies have focused on YouTube’s algorithmic infrastructure, limited research exists on the actual content in these networks. Building on Lewis’s (2018) classification of an “alternative influencer” network, we ...

The Counter-Terrorism Committee unanimously adopted the Delhi Declaration at the closing of its special meeting on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes, held in India on 28-29 October 2022. The special meeting focused on three main areas: unmanned aerial systems, terrorist financing and information and communications technologies. The meeting also ...

The past several years have seen rising hate crimes, terrorist attacks, and broader extremist movements, with news reports often noting that these movements can be traced back to fringe online communities. Yet the question remains why such online groups appear more likely to foster radicalization than those in other contexts. This netnographic case study demonstrates ...