Report
Hate Crime: Abuse, Hate and Extremism Online
September 18, 2023We announced this inquiry into hate crime and its violent consequences in early July 2016. Our decision to undertake the inquiry followed the murder of Jo Cox MP in June in the lead-up to the EU referendum. There was also evidence of an increase in the number of attacks on people from ethnic minorities and ...
Shooting the Messenger: Do Not Blame the Internet for Terrorism
September 18, 2023The internet clearly matters to terrorists, but online content by itself rarely causes people to carry out terrorist attacks. Responses should therefore not be limited to the mass removal of terrorist content from online platforms. ...
Mapping Extremist Communities: A Social Network Analysis Approach
September 18, 2023In the domain of computer science, the last years have witnessed the improvement of social network analysis at scale. One of the most challenging aspects of social network analysis is community detection; analysts use a variety of tools to visualise the spontaneous group structure emerging from interactions and friendship relations in multi-million-user networks. This visualisation, ...
The Key Lessons Learned from the Use of the Internet by Jihadist Groups
September 18, 2023This work analyzes some of the key lessons learned from the use of the Internet by jihadist groups over the last twenty years: 1) Online activism can be a substitute for commitment to armed jihad. 3) Terrorists are “early adopters” of new technologies, to enjoy spaces of impunity. 4) The investigation of terrorist activities on ...
Mothers To Bombers: The Evolution of Indonesian Women Extremists
September 18, 2023The arrest of two female would-be suicide bombers in Jakarta in December 2016 shows the desire of Indonesian women for a more active role in violent extremism. It may be a reflection of the pro-ISIS movement’s weakness that male leaders are more willing to oblige them than in the past, but the initiative has come ...
Media Jihad: The Islamic State’s Doctrine for Information Warfare
September 18, 2023Weeks after its capture of Mosul in 2014, the Islamic State set about transforming its strategic trajectory. Through an avalanche of media products, it worked to aggressively insert itself into the global public discourse and, in turn, popularise its brand, polarise adversary populations and drive rivals into the ideological side-lines. This research paper presents new, empirical insight ...
Continuity and Change: The Evolution and Resiliance of Al-Shabab’s Media Insurgency, 2006-2016
September 18, 2023The Somali jihadi-insurgent movement Al-Shabab has established itself, since emerging in 2007 after the overthrow of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) umbrella in the wake of the December 2006 Ethiopian invasion and occupation of parts of Somalia, as one of the relatively few jihadi organizations to succeed in the capture, control, and governance of territory ...
Private Sector Engagement in Responding to the Use of the Internet and ICT for Terrorist Purposes
September 18, 2023On the one hand, the companies in question feel a business incentive to create a digital environment where their users feel safe, and are increasingly compelled by governments to cooperate in blocking, filtering, countering or removing content or accounts on the grounds of public safety or national security concerns. In addition, users expect the companies ...
Religious Appeals in Daesh’s Recruitment Propaganda
September 18, 2023The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Daesh) employs a complex online media strategy to recruit targeted demographics. Its success has exacerbated conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere, and has become a concern for the international community. The Carter Center (the Center) is working to counter Daesh’s recruitment propaganda efforts by undertaking in-depth ...