Mass Media

Terrorism is a highly irregular form of crime where multiple factors combine to create circumstances that are unique to each case of involvement, or attempted involvement, in terrorist violence. Yet, there are commonalities in the way in which efforts to become involved unfold as processes, reflected as sequential developments where different forces combine to create ...

■ Internet subcultures take advantage of the current media ecosystem to manipulate news frames, set agendas, and propagate ideas. ■ Far-right groups have developed techniques of “attention hacking” to increase the visibility of their ideas through the strategic use of social media, memes, and bots—as well as by targeting journalists, bloggers, and influencers to help ...

Weeks after its capture of Mosul in 2014, the Islamic State set about transforming its strategic trajectory. Through an avalanche of media products, it worked to aggressively insert itself into the global public discourse and, in turn, popularise its brand, polarise adversary populations and drive rivals into the ideological side-lines. This research paper presents new, empirical insight ...

Counter-narratives and campaigns promoting normality, are often highlighted as universal means against online propaganda from militant movements. However, such campaigns are driven by a number of unfortunate assumptions and are difficult to apply in practice. ...

The increased influx of refugees and migrants to the EU in 2015 has been followed by a noticeable presence of online hate speech against migrants in many countries across Europe. The article presents the results of a study of hate speech proliferation on Facebook in the Czech Republic during the summer of 2015. Its goal ...

In opdracht van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum (WODC) van het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie (VenJ) heeft Coosto een verkennende studie uitgevoerd naar mogelijke nieuwe social media toepassingen voor VenJ. Deze studie beoogt primair nieuwe toepassingen in kaart te brengen of bestaande toepassingen te herformuleren zodat ze bruikbaar zijn voor VenJ. Het daadwerkelijk ontwikkelen ...

Al-Qaeda’s media strategy in 2009 reflected the group’s attempts to meet the triple challenge of a shifting media landscape, its enmeshment in the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus, and the global jihadist movement’s failures over the last several years. The results are ambiguous. Al-Qaeda appears to be holding the attention of the faithful, but it faces a rising ...

In June 2014 the organisation known as ‘Islamic State’ (IS) announced the establishment of a 680km Syrian and Iraqi Caliphate. Since this time, it has exercised large scale massacres of Middle Eastern civilians, executed foreign prisoners, and forced dissenters into sexual and economic slavery (Lister, 2014: 17). To sustain its operational strength and acquisition of ...

This paper presents the first criminological analysis of an online social reaction to a crime event of national significance, in particular the detection and propagation of cyberhate on social media following a terrorist attack. We take the Woolwich, London terrorist attack in 2013 as our event of interest and draw on Cohen’s process of warning, ...

The riots in the suburbs of Paris (and across the country) in October and November 2005 lasted for about three weeks. The degree of violence and anger of the riots astonished an entire world. While the mainstream media, both in France and internationally, covered these events ‘as usual,’ some became aware that the internet seemed ...