Journal Article

While the radical right is relatively successful on social media, only a fraction of its supporters become activists offline. Why do some individuals become offline activists in radical right organizations, while others prefer to limit their support to online spaces? Following an inductive analysis of interviews with activists and supporters of a radical right organization, ...

This article examines the consensus points, evidence base and blind spots of radicalization discourse: namely, the approved ways of talking about radicalization/deradicalization that claim a special scientific or scholarly authority and that have become entrenched as a kind of socially sanctioned common sense embedded in academia, the media and government bureaucracy. Drawing on an analysis ...

In 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 ...

This 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 ...

Ephemeral 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 ...

This 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 ...

Expressions 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 ...

This 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 ...

This 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 ...

There 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 ...