Journal Article
The Metaverse as a Future Threat Landscape
September 12, 2024In response to the emergence of new, paradigm-shifting technology that increases capability for the benefit and – as is the focus of this work – harm, we sought to provide contributions across three key areas. First, as a foundation, we provide a definition of the ambiguous and, at times, confusing term ‘metaverse’ and outline its ...
Propaganda in focus: decoding the media strategy of ISIS
September 12, 2024This investigation employs the analytical framework established by Braddock and Horgan to conduct a comprehensive content analysis of 79 official English-language propaganda videos disseminated by ISIS, with the objective of quantifying the thematic composition and the evolutionary trajectory of ISIS’s international media operations and propaganda machinery from 2014 to 2017. The findings reveal that a ...
Message Deletion on Telegram: Affected Data Types and Implications for Computational Analysis
September 5, 2024Ephemeral digital trace data can decrease the completeness, reproducibility, and reliability of social media datasets. Systematic post deletions thus potentially bias the results of computational methods used to map actors, content, and online information diffusion. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the extent and distribution of message deletion across different data types ...
Dark web jihad: exploring the militant Islamist information ecosystem on The Onion Router
August 29, 2024This paper maps communication channels exploited by the Salafi-jihadist violent extremist organisations (VEOs) and their followers between March 2020 and June 2022 on The Onion Router (TOR). It argues that the true scale of digital jihadist presence on TOR has remained insignificant for years. Militant Islamists have mostly used .onion domains as backup propaganda dissemination ...
Eco-Fascism Online: Conceptualizing Far-Right Actors’ Response to Climate Change on Stormfront
August 29, 2024Expressions of ‘eco-fascism’ are said to entail ethnonationalist actors advocating extreme population control measures, and accelerationists hastening the collapse of societies worldwide. These expressions emerge from political-ideological environments in which Global North actors have erroneously assigned blame for climate change with the Global South, through rhetoric about migration, population control and fossil fuel usage. To ...
Financial Extremism: The Dark Side of Crowdfunding and Terrorism
August 29, 2024This study sheds light on the emerging threat of terrorists, particularly Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations, leveraging online crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies. The recent events of October 7, 2023, highlight the pressing nature of this issue. A systematic case analysis reveals the sophisticated exploitation of digital finance for discreet resource accumulation, circumventing traditional oversight. The ...
In Mapping Digital Jihad: Understanding the Structure and Evolution of al-Qaeda’s Information Ecosystem on the Surface Web
August 29, 2024This article, which combines social network analysis and open-source intelligence, discusses the functions, structure, and evolution of al-Qaeda’s (AQ) information ecosystem on the surface web in the second half of 2023. It argues that despite preferring Rocket Chat as a primary communication channel, this terrorist organisation developed an extensive and robust propaganda distribution network detectable ...
Addressing Toxicity and Extremism in Games: Conversations with the Video Game Industry
August 28, 2024There has been an increased focus on reducing hate, harassment, and extremist exploitation in digital games through solutions from community management, trust and safety, and design perspectives. Despite this attention, the industry lacks basic standards around these issues and efforts in this area are stymied by the ubiquity of “toxic gamer culture” and fears in ...
Brethren in Terror: Mapping ISIS and Boko Haram Digital Campaigns
August 28, 2024Scholars have increasingly sought commonalities among Islamist radical groups, such as ISIS and Boko Haram, despite their ideological differences. The purpose of this qualitative study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of both ISIS and Boko Haram’s digital campaigns to identify similarities and differences in the content of their digital messaging. Adopting reflexive thematic analysis ...
LIVE TERROR A NEW WAY/MODEL OF ONLINE RADICALIZATION?
August 28, 2024With the exponential development of the virtual environment and social networks, radical elements have managed to promote and disseminate their radical ideas, in less time, to a wider and more diversified audience than in the past. This aspect has caused a shift of radicalization processes from the offline environment to the online environment, turning online ...