Journal Article

The ‘involuntary celibates’, or men who have been unable to find romantic or sexual relationships with women despite wanting to, have congregated in the online incel community. Though initially supportive in nature, the community has become a hotbed for (violent) online misogyny. My ongoing virtual ethnographic research focuses on the nature of the incel community ...

Research on far-right extremism has grown substantially over the last decade, owing to the rise of Trump, attacks such as the one in Christchurch and Buffalo, as well as the mainstreaming of hate speech and polarization. In addition to research, there have been antifascist activists who have been engaged in doxxing members of the far ...

The article explores the patterning and functioning of attitude semantics in the practice of identity attacks within terrorist communications. Positioned in facework and stance-taking research (e.g. Tracy & Tracy, 1998, 2008, 2017), it introduces the concepts of ‘evaluative textbites’ and ‘attitudinal priming’ to linguistic examinations, advocating a functional approach to unravelling identity attacks, drawing on ...

This paper discusses research on QAnon, a controversial conspiracy movement. Its public engagement mechanisms and discursive practices, focusing on members’ activities on Telegram, are analysed. These activities have elevated concerns about the group’s threat to democracy, prompting intelligence agencies to identify it as a potential risk. This study emphasises the need to understand QAnon’s discursive ...

While the extreme right wing (ERW) has not gained a foothold in local or national Irish politics, the country has witnessed a growth in online activism and harassment, and physical protest and violence. This paper explores a case study based on 4876 unique posts from one Irish-based Telegram group active during six months of the ...

The use of the Internet to spawn hate sites and recruit advocates for hate began as early as the mid-1980s in bulletin boards, and the first acknowledged hate site was Stormfront, in the early 1990s. Since then hundreds of hate sites and other websites advocating terror have been developed, some with stated aims of recruiting ...

No abstract available. ...

In the context of far-right terrorism, memes on 4chan play a fundamental role. These memes not only serve as a form of propaganda but also as a tool to radicalize and mobilize users. On 4chan, a site known for its lack of moderation and anonymity, memes are used to spread extremist ideologies in a viral ...

This article examines the role of media platforms in the jihadist propaganda ecosystem. It presents a case study of the Muntasir Media platform which achieved extensive media impact in Spain during the period 2018–19. A descriptive analysis is provided of the emergence, evolution and demise of the platform, which can be viewed as an archetypal ...

Social media messages often provide insights into offline behaviors. Although hate speech proliferates rapidly across social media platforms, it is rarely recognized as a cybercrime, even when it may be linked to offline hate crimes that typically involve physical violence. This paper aims to anticipate violent acts by analyzing online hate speech (hatred, toxicity, and ...