Report
Krise und Kontrollverlust: Digitaler Extremismus im Kontext der Corona-Pandemie
September 18, 2023Dieser Report analysiert die Netzwerke und Narrative deutschsprachiger rechtsextremer, linksextremer und islamistisch-extremistischer Akteure auf Mainstream- und alternativen Social-Media-Plattformen sowie extremistischen Websites im Kontext der Corona-Pandemie. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen: Extremisten aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz konnten ihre Reichweite seit der Einführung der Lockdown-Maßnahmen vergrößern. ...
Covid-19: far right violent extremism and tech platforms’ response
September 18, 2023Terrorists and violent extremists are manipulators seeking to exploit stress factors in our societies. The Covid-19 pandemic, its ensuing lockdown measures, as well as the spread of related mis- and disinformation online, thus represented an almost ideal opportunity for malevolent actors to exploit. Far-right violent extremists, in particular, quickly jumped on the opportunity offered by ...
Decoding Hate: Using Experimental Text Analysis to Classify Terrorist Content
September 18, 2023This paper uses automated text analysis – the process by which unstructured text is extracted, organised and processed into a meaningful format – to develop tools capable of analysing Islamic State (IS) propaganda at scale. Although we have used a static archive of IS material, the underlying principle is that these techniques can be deployed ...
Stop the virus of disinformation: the risk of malicious use of social media during COVID-19 and the technology options to fight it
September 18, 2023This report describes how terrorist, violent extremist and organized criminal groups are trying to take advantage of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic to expand their activities and jeopardize the efficacy and credibility of response measures by governments. ...
Status quo und Massnahmen zu rassistischer Hassrede im Internet: Übersicht und Empfehlungen
September 18, 2023Rassistische Hassrede im Internet: Wie soll die Schweiz in Zukunft damit umgehen? Der vorliegende Bericht, welchen die Fachstelle für Rassismusbekämpfung (FRB) in Auftrag gegeben hat, liefert dazu einen Beitrag. Er beinhaltet eine kritische Zusammenfassung der Datenlage, einen Einblick in die digitale Umwelt und egünstigenden Kommunikationsbedingungen rassistischer Online-Hassrede sowie einen Überblick zu bestehenden Gegenmassnahmen in der ...
The Online Regulation Series | The Philippines
September 18, 2023The Philippines is one of the countries worst affected by terrorism in the world, ranking as the ninth most affected country in the 2019 Global Terrorist Index. The country has long been investing in its counterterrorism apparatus and there have been some signs that the Philippines might introduce legislation that targets online terrorist content. This ...
Network-Enabled Anarchy: How Militant Anarcho-Socialist Networks Use Social Media to Instigate Widespread Violence Against Political Opponents and Law Enforcement
September 18, 2023Our primary research question was whether memes and codewords, private or fringe online forums, and hybrid real-world/online militia—the three characteristic tactics that support outbreaks of extremist violence for both Jihadi and Boogaloo extremism—are also prevalent in anti-fascist and anarcho-socialist groups. To analyze the use and prevalence of memes and other coded language and activity, we ...
4chan & 8chan embeddings
September 18, 2023We have collected over 30M messages from the publicly available /pol/ message boards on 4chan and 8chan, and compiled them into a model of toxic language use. The trained word embeddings (±0.4GB) are released for free and may be useful for further study on toxic discourse or to boost hate speech detection systems: textgain.com/8chan. ...
Artificial Intelligence and Countering Violent Extremism: A Primer
September 18, 2023Radicalisation can take place offline as well as online. To what extent the internet plays a role remains contested. Doubtless, there are radical and extreme communities online. This report looked into the ability of artificial intelligence (AI) applications to contribute to countering radicalisation. Mapping the possibilities and limitations of this technology in its various forms, ...
The Online Regulation Series | Kenya
September 18, 2023Kenya has “increasingly sought to remove online content”, both through requests and increased regulation, that it deems “immoral” or “defamatory”. Following terrorist attacks on civilian targets in recent years, the country has heightened its efforts around counterterrorism as well as online content regulation. Many of Kenya’s legislations have been criticised by civil society for their ...