Dear Mr. Zuckerberg
September 18, 2023
A letter to Mr. Zuckerberg from the UN Rapporteur on the definition of terrorism. ...
Mobilizing extremism online: comparing Australian and Canadian right-wing extremist groups on Facebook
September 18, 2023
Right-wing extremist groups harness popular social media platforms to accrue and mobilize followers. In recent years, researchers have examined the various themes and narratives espoused by extremist groups in the United States and Europe, and how these themes and narratives are employed to mobilize their followings on social media. Little, however, is comparatively known about ...
Countering Hate Speech on Facebook: The Case of the Roma Minority in Slovakia
September 18, 2023
This article explores hate speech against the Roma in Slovakia on Facebook between April 2016 and January 2017 and the impact of fact-checking and personal experience strategies in countering hate speech through a quasi-experimental research design. It examines how the Roma were constructed and how discussion participants reacted to our pro-Roma interventions. The research sample ...
Mounting a Facebook Brand Awareness and Safety Ad Campaign to Break the ISIS Brand in Iraq
September 18, 2023
This article reports on the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE’s) most recent Facebook ad campaign aimed at raising awareness about the realities of living under ISIS and protecting vulnerable potential recruits from considering joining. During the course of 24 days in December of 2017, ICSVE researchers mounted the campaign on Facebook using ...
Encouraging Counter-Speech by Mapping the Contours of Hate Speech on Facebook in India
September 18, 2023
Efforts at Countering Violent Extremism (or CVE in internationally accepted terminology) online have become an important focus for all social networks. CVE targets violent, extremist ideologies at their core, tackling them via alternate narratives that focus on peace-building through community interaction. It has thus become an invaluable tool to supplement counterterrorism strategies worldwide. ...
Extreme Right Images of Radical Authenticity: Multimodal Aesthetics of History, Nature, and Gender Roles in Social Media
September 18, 2023
Over recent years, the German extreme right has undergone significant changes, including the appropriation of symbols, styles, and action repertoires of contemporary (youth) cultures, sometimes even taken from the far left. In this article, we investigate extreme right visual communication through Facebook, focusing on claims to truth and authentic Nazism in relation to ‘history’, ‘nature’, ...
Anti-refugee Mobilization in Social Media: The Case of Soldiers of Odin
September 18, 2023
In the wake of the international refugee crisis, racist attitudes are becoming more publicly evident across the European Union. Propelled by the attacks in Köln on New Year’s Eve 2015 and harsher public sentiments on immigration, vigilante gangs have emerged in various European cities. These gangs mobilize through social media networks and claim to protect ...
Fool me Once: How Terrorists Like and Rely Upon the “See no Evil, Hear no Evil” Business Model of Google Facebook and Instagram
September 18, 2023
The latest Digital Citizens Alliance investigation exposes the fallacy that much, if anything, has changed. Partnering with the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center (GIPEC), Digital Citizens has reviewed dozens of examples of how terrorist organizations continue to rely on digital platforms such as Google, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to promote hate speech and recruit. What ...
Spiders of the Caliphate: Mapping the Islamic State’s Global Support Network on Facebook
September 18, 2023
This report analyzes the strength of the Islamic State’s (IS) network on Facebook using online network measurement tools and uncovers the myriad of ways in which IS operates on Facebook. To do so, we mapped the accounts and connections between 1,000 IS-supporting Facebook profiles with links to 96 countries on every continent except Antarctica using ...
Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime
September 18, 2023
This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime using hand-collected data from Facebook and Twitter. We study the case of Germany, where the recently emerged right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has developed a major social media presence. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that right-wing anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts violent ...