Islamic Extremism
Behind Blue Skies: A Multimodal Automated Content Analysis of Islamic Extremist Propaganda on Instagram
April 28, 2025Social media platforms, such as Instagram, are regularly misused for spreading covert (Islamic) extremist propaganda. Affect and emotion are central tools used in extremist propaganda, but there is little research into the combined employment of different social media elements, such as hashtags, visuals, and texts, in the context of propaganda. This study contributes to closing ...
Alternative Narratives and Countering Violent Extremism in the Arc of Instability: Reflections on Post-ISIS Iraq
December 19, 2024This chapter is a contribution to the debate on information resilience and national security from the perspective of countering violent Islamist extremism in the arc of instability. The narratives crafted by various violent Islamist extremists are a form of information resilience, but in this case, they act as counterforces, hindering state efforts to prepare for ...
Extremism, the extreme right, and conspiracy myths on social media
October 20, 2024In this chapter, we explore the communication modes and tactics used by extremists across the ideological spectrum to spread their narratives on social media. We argue that a growing body of evidence suggests that extremist movements across the political spectrum make use of similar communication modes and tactics on social media to reach their objectives. ...
Hybrid Movements, Digital Technology, and the Rise and Fall of Far-Right Islamist Protest Mobilization in Indonesia
August 28, 2024What explains the rise and fall of far-right Islamist protest mobilization in contemporary Indonesia? The 2016-2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election witnessed significant growth in support for and mobilization of the far-right. While far-right Islamist mobilization has occurred regularly since the fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998, its longevity and impact on electoral politics has ...
Reflecting on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s 2024 ban in the UK: exploring the group’s ideology and tactics
July 23, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
We Should Pay More Attention to the Role of Gender in Islamist Radicalization
July 16, 2024VOX-Pol Blog post. ...
The European Far Right and Islamist Extremism on Twitter: From Radicalisation to Political Participation
September 18, 2023This article explores the results of a study on media participation on Twitter in 2018/2019 perceived as contributing to far right and Islamist radical ideologies, in 7 European countries. By combining online ethnography and big data approaches, we see that online far right extremism in Europe is active and ranks are growing, while Islamist extremism ...
A comparative analysis of right-wing radical and Islamist communities’ strategies for survival in social networks (evidence from the Russian social network VKontakte)
September 18, 2023This article presents a comparative analysis of online communities of right-wing radicals and Islamists, who are considered to be numerous and dangerous extremist groups in Russian society. The online communities were selected based on the content posted on the largest Russian social networking site VKontakte. The goal of this article is to determine the strategy ...
Modeling Islamist Extremist Communications on Social Media using Contextual Dimensions: Religion, Ideology, and Hate
September 18, 2023Terror attacks have been linked in part to online extremist content. Although tens of thousands of Islamist extremism supporters consume such content, they are a small fraction relative to peaceful Muslims. The efforts to contain the ever-evolving extremism on social media platforms have remained inadequate and mostly ineffective. Divergent extremist and mainstream contexts challenge machine ...