Is the Internet an Incubator for Radicalisation
September 18, 2023
This blog post explores the reasons why some online ideological groups take action while others do not and focuses on to what extent the online communications of ideological groups contribute to direct collective action. In order to address this question, we examined a number of online groups using a variety of criteria, including the way ...
Terrorisme i Cyberspace: Udfordringer ved Organisering og Udførelse af Politisk Vold Online
September 18, 2023
Internettet præsenteres ofte som et farligt redskab i hænderne på terrorister. Det er dog ikke nødvendigvis sandheden. Artiklen trækker på indsigter fra studier af sunniekstremistiske grupper, Anders B. Breivik og Anonymous og diskuterer terroristers anvendelse af internettet i organiseringen og udførelsen af terrorisme. Jeg vil argumentere for, at det anarkiske og anonyme internet fører mistillid ...
The Hidden Face of Jihadist Internet Forum Management: The Case of Ansar Al Mujahideen
September 18, 2023
This article offers a descriptive analysis of the private interactions which took place on the jihadist Internet forum known as Ansar Al Mujahideen between 2008 and 2010. The analysis of the non-visible part of the forum contributes to a more robust underpinning of some current assumptions regarding the jihadist Internet infrastructure and its hierarchical dependence ...
‘Don’t Talk to Me’: Effects of Ideologically Homogeneous Online Groups and Politically Dissimilar Offline Ties on Extremism
September 18, 2023
This study analyzes cross-sectional data obtained from respondents in neo-Nazi online discussion forums and textual data from postings to these forums. It assesses the impact of participation in radical and homogeneous online groups on opinion extremism and probes whether this impact depends on political dissimilarity of strong and weak offline ties. Specifically, does dissimilarity attenuate ...
Mobilisation and Violence in the New Media Ecology: the Dua Khalil Aswad and Camilia Shehata Cases
September 18, 2023
This article examines two cases in which political groups sought to harness the new media ecology to mobilise and justify acts of violence to public audiences and to supporters. In each case, a woman’s suffering is presented and instrumentalised. However, the new media ecology offers an increasingly irregular economy of media modulation: digital footage may ...
Analysis of PKK/KONGRA-GEL Websites to Identify Points of Vulnerability
September 18, 2023
The PKK/KONGRA-GEL terrorist group makes extensive use of the internet, notably for propaganda. The prominent PKK websites are listed in a dataset which shows the way these sites relate to each other with links. An overview of their content is given, then various software and analysis tools, notably Unicet, are used to reveal different aspects ...
Linksextreme Medien
September 18, 2023
Linksextreme Medien wollen nicht möglichst objektiv über allgemeine Belange berichten. Sie sind auch keine Wirtschaftsunternehmen, die kundenorientiert Leistungen verkaufen wollen. Sie verfolgen politische Ziele – und bekämpfen die politischen Gegner. ...
Differential Online Exposure to Extremist Content and Political Violence: Testing the Relative Strength of Social Learning and Competing Perspectives
September 18, 2023
The present study applies Social Learning (Differential Association) Theory to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through new social media (NSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using (a) a paper-and-pencil study among high school students, and (b) a web survey targeting youths between ...
The Dark Side of the Web: Italian Right-Wing Extremist Groups and the Internet
September 18, 2023
Focusing on extreme-right organisations in Italy, this article addresses the specific use of the Internet by extremist groups and its potential role for the formation of collective identity, organisational contacts and mobilisation. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organisations, even violent groups. Through the combination of Social Network Analysis (SNA) of web linkages ...
Making Friends and Enemies on Social Media: The Case of Gun Policy Organizations
September 18, 2023
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of interest groups in the formation of online echo chambers and to determine whether interest groups’ use of social media contributes to political polarization. This study used a content analysis of nearly 10,000 tweets (from 2009 to 2014) by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun ...