Extremist Content
Vicarious Trauma via the Observation of Extremist Atrocities: A Rapid Evidence Assessment
January 23, 2025Researchers are increasingly conducting research using primary source data involving observation of, and exposure to, violent extremist individuals, their acts, their online content, and the ideologies that they act in support of. Of concern is that this increased use of primary source material has not occurred alongside a serious investigation of the traumatic outcomes that ...
The overlap between viewing child sexual abuse material and fringe or radical content online
January 23, 2025Drawing on a survey of 13,302 online Australians, this study examines the characteristics and behaviours of respondents who viewed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and fringe or radical content online, or both. In the past 12 months, 40.6 percent of respondents had viewed fringe or radical content and 4.5 percent had viewed CSAM. Among respondents ...
Exposure to and sharing of fringe or radical content online
January 23, 2025Using a large, national survey of online Australians, we measured unintentional and intentional exposure to fringe or radical content and groups online. Two in five respondents (40.6%) reported being exposed to material they described as fringe, unorthodox or radical. One-quarter of these respondents (23.2%) accessed the content intentionally. One-third (29.9%) said the content they had ...
Supreme Court unlikely to ‘break the internet’ over Google, Twitter cases – rather, it is approaching with caution
August 10, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
The UK Extreme Right on Twitter: Restricting Access to Extremist Content Online
July 16, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
Facebook’s policies against extremism: Ten years of struggle for more transparency
September 18, 2023For years, social media, including Facebook, have been criticized for lacking transparency in their community standards, especially in terms of extremist content. Yet, moderation is not an easy task, especially when extreme-right actors use content strategies that shift the Overton window (i.e., the range of ideas acceptable in public discourse) rightward. In a self-proclaimed search ...
A Safe Space to Hate: White Supremacist Mobilisation on Telegram
September 18, 2023The briefing highlights how through its limited content moderation policies Telegram has become a safe space for white supremacists to share and discuss a range of explicit extremist material. Furthermore, it shows that through the many of these Telegram communities have become permissive environments where overt calls for violence and support for terrorism is widespread. ...
Cyber-routines, Political Attitudes, and Exposure to Violence-Advocating Online Extremism
September 18, 2023The Internet’s relatively unfettered transmission of information risks exposing individuals to extremist content. Using online survey data (N = 768) of American youth and young adults, we examine factors that bring individuals into contact with online material advocating violence. Combining aspects of social structure-social learning theory with insights from routine activity theory, we find that ...