Christchurch attack
“Press F to Pay Respects”: An Empirical Exploration of the Mechanics of Gamification in Relation to the Christchurch Attack
April 28, 2025There has been a long-standing yet largely unreported intersection between video-gaming and violent extremism, spanning across jihadist, far-right, and other types of ideologies. Within this framework, until late, scant attention has been paid to the concept of “gamification”; i.e. the application of gaming and game-design principles within non-gaming environments. This paper contributes to this newly ...
Christchurch’s Legacy of Fighting Violent Extremism Online Must Go Further – Deep into the Dark Web
August 21, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
The Christchurch Terror Attack: A Case of Online Radicalisation?
August 16, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
What can we learn from the online response to the Halle terrorist attack?
August 7, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
Social media creates a spectacle society that makes it easier for terrorists to achieve notoriety
August 6, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
What Does the ‘New Right’ Have to do With the Christchurch Attack? Some Evidence from Twitter on Discursive Overlaps
August 6, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
VOX-Pol Guest Lecture Series: The Christchurch Call
August 2, 2024VOX-Pol Guest Lecture Series, Autumn 2023 Name: Kristina Kirk, Principal Advisor, Christchurch Call Unit, New Zealand Government Title: The Christchurch Call Outline: This presentation will discuss the establishment and evolution of The Christchurch Call, an initiative arising as a consequence of the livestreaming of an horrific terrorist event in New Zealand in 2019. The Call ...
The Christchurch Call Leaders Summit 20 September 2022: civil society perspectives
July 25, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
The ‘First Person Shooter’ Perspective: A Different View on First Person Shooters, Gamification, and First Person Terrorist Propaganda
September 18, 2023During the 2019 Christchurch attack, the perpetrator livestreamed footage from a helmet-mounted camera. The aesthetic similarity of the attack footage to first-person shooter (FPS) videogames has led to speculation that this might have somehow ‘gamified’ the attack. Generally, the argument for this is that the attack footage (1) imitates or resembles FPS games, gamifying attacks ...
The ‘tarrant effect’: what impact did far-right attacks have on the 8chan forum?
September 18, 2023This paper analyses the impact of a series of mass shootings committed in 2018–2019 by right-wing extremists on 8chan/pol, a prominent far-right online forum. Using computational methods, it offers a detailed examination of how attacks trigger shifts in both forum activity and content. We find that while each shooting is discussed by forum participants, their ...