Rethinking Social Media and Extremism
September 18, 2023
Terrorism, global pandemics, climate change, wars and all the major threats of our age have been targets of online extremism. The same social media occupying the heartland of our social world leaves us vulnerable to cybercrime, electoral fraud and the ‘fake news’ fuelling the rise of far-right violence and hate speech. In the face of ...
From solidarity to blame game: A computational approach to comparing far-right and general public Twitter discourse in the aftermath of the Hanau terror attack
September 18, 2023
Terror attacks are followed by public shock and disorientation. Previous research has found that people use social media to collectively negotiate responses, interpretations, and sense-making in the aftermath of terror attacks. However, the role of ideologically motivated discussions and their relevance to the overall discourse have not been studied. This paper ad-dresses this gap and ...
Covid-19 Protesters and the Far Right on Telegram: Co-Conspirators or Accidental Bedfellows?
September 18, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the creation of a new protest movement, positioned against government lockdowns, mandatory vaccines, and related measures. Efforts to control misinformation by digital platforms resulted in take downs of key accounts and posts. This led some of these protest groups to migrate to platforms with less stringent content moderation policies, such ...
Far Cry 5, American Right-Wing Terrorism, and Doomsday Prepper Culture
September 18, 2023
The article explores Far Cry 5’s commentary on the rise of the radical right, domestic terrorism, and extremism in America. The game’s two primary modes for this narrative critique involve its use of Christian symbolism and its exploration of doomsday prepper culture. What emerges from this analysis is that Far Cry 5 provides a harrowing ...
Exploring Cyberterrorism, Topic Models and Social Networks of Jihadists Dark Web Forums: A Computational Social Science Approach
September 18, 2023
This three-article dissertation focuses on cyber-related topics on terrorist groups, specifically Jihadists’ use of technology, the application of natural language processing, and social networks in analyzing text data derived from terrorists’ Dark Web forums. The first article explores cybercrime and cyberterrorism. As technology progresses, it facilitates new forms of behavior, including tech-related crimes known as ...
The Terror Times: The Depth and Breadth of the Islamic State Alternative News Outlet Ecosystem Online
September 18, 2023
This report highlights the networks, supporters, and the platforms of Islamic State disinformation disseminators, focusing on popular social media platforms as well as encrypted messaging applications. These disinformation networks are creating self-branded media outlets with followers in the tens of thousands, and often with innocuous names like “Global Happenings,” “DRIL” and “Media Center,” to evade ...
Salafi-Jihadism and Digital Media
September 18, 2023
This book explores the online strategies and presence of Salafi-Jihadi actors in the Nordic as well as the international context. Global Salafi-jihadism has been at the epicentre of international focus during the past decade. This book explores how the Swedish and other Nordic Salafi-jihadist sympathisers have used social digital media to radicalise, recruit, and propagate ...
Inside a White Power echo chamber: Why fringe digital spaces are polarizing politics
September 18, 2023
Recent decades have seen a blurring of the line between extremist movements and mainstream politics, driven by rising sectarian polarization. This development has been linked to digital media, with suggestions that so-called echo chambers may drive political radicalization. To understand the social processes taking place inside such digital spaces, this article draws on Randall Collins ...
Online Terrorism Studies: Analysis of the Literature
September 18, 2023
This study examined the literature on online terrorism studies between 2001 and 2022 and compared themes across journal segments and funded research. The results showed that there is a relationship between funding and the number of publications in recent years. While themes in the core terrorism journals more likely to follow the traditional terrorism studies, ...
From Traits to Threats – Identification of Personality Traits for Individuals at Risk of Radicalisation on Social Media
September 18, 2023
This Thesis contributes by proposing a method for identifying users believed to be at risk of radicalisation on social media, by utilising the social media networks of already radicalised individuals and a set of indicators derived from related work on radicalisation. In addition, this Thesis provides a new to the field, in-depth analysis of the ...