Covid-19
The online exchange of conspiracy theories within an Irish extreme right wing Telegram group during the COVID-19 pandemic
October 20, 2024While the extreme right wing (ERW) has not gained a foothold in local or national Irish politics, the country has witnessed a growth in online activism and harassment, and physical protest and violence. This paper explores a case study based on 4876 unique posts from one Irish-based Telegram group active during six months of the ...
Organize and Fight (Online): Assessing the Discursive Extremism of Anti-Lockdown Groups in Australia
October 2, 2024Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-lockdown movements sparked concerns about online extremism escalating into real-world violence. This study takes the Australian anti-lockdown movement to explore extremist discourse in Australia, as it contained several, overlapping and interacting extremisms. This study explores the labelling of these protests as extreme and examines the interplay between individuals, ...
Exploiting Chaos: How Malicious Non-State Actors Are Using COVID-19 to Their Advantage in Cyberspace
September 5, 2024Since the beginning of 2020, while societies and economies around the world have struggled to cope with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, cyberspace has given governments, businesses, and general end-users the ability to work, play, and connect in new and innovative ways. With everything from workspaces and classrooms to family gatherings and exercise routines ...
From Blaming China to Attacking Domestic Elites: The Evolution of Hate Speech in a Telegram Channel during the COVID-19 Pandemic
August 10, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
What Is the Link Between Computer Gaming and Hate-based Ideologies?
August 8, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
Close to Home: The Canadian Far Right, COVID-19 and Social Media
July 25, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
Covid-19 Protesters and the Far Right on Telegram: Co-Conspirators or Accidental Bedfellows?
September 18, 2023The COVID-19 pandemic led to the creation of a new protest movement, positioned against government lockdowns, mandatory vaccines, and related measures. Efforts to control misinformation by digital platforms resulted in take downs of key accounts and posts. This led some of these protest groups to migrate to platforms with less stringent content moderation policies, such ...
Fascist cross-pollination of Australian conspiracist Telegram channels
September 18, 2023The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about trauma and uncertainty for vast swathes of the world population, including in Australia. One effect of this has been the growth of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and general conspiracism. This article explores efforts by fascists and neo-Nazis to exploit the rise in conspiratorial thinking for recruitment and dissemination of their ...
White Supremacy Search Trends in the United States
September 18, 2023Moonshot partnered with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to analyze US search traffic in response to the threats posed by white supremacist narratives and ideology in the US this past year. The dominant socio-political events of 2020-2021—the COVID-19 pandemic, the widespread BLM protests and counter-protests, and the presidential election—coalesced to create fertile ground for white supremacists ...