Online communities
#Jailbait and “In a videogame ofc”: Transgression and violent talk as community building in the incelosphere
August 10, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
Don’t Just Blame YouTube’s Algorithms for ‘Radicalisation’. Humans Also Play a Part
August 7, 2024VOX-Pol Blog Post. ...
Assessing the Extent and Types of Hate Speech in Fringe Communities: A Case Study of Alt-Right Communities on 8chan, 4chan, and Reddit
September 18, 2023Recent right-wing extremist terrorists were active in online fringe communities connected to the alt-right movement. Although these are commonly considered as distinctly hateful, racist, and misogynistic, the prevalence of hate speech in these communities has not been comprehensively investigated yet, particularly regarding more implicit and covert forms of hate. This study exploratively investigates the extent, ...
Online extremism and the communities that sustain it: Detecting the ISIS supporting community on Twitter
September 18, 2023The Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) continues to use social media as an essential element of its campaign to motivate support. On Twitter, ISIS’ unique ability to leverage unaffiliated sympathizers that simply retweet propaganda has been identified as a primary mechanism in their success in motivating both recruitment and “lone wolf” attacks. The ...
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 ...
Exploring “Stormfront”: A Virtual Community of the Radical Right
September 18, 2023In considering how terrorist movements use the Internet, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we must move beyond predominantly descriptive overviews of the contents of websites to examine in more detail the notion of virtual communities of support and the functions of these for their members. Virtual communities in support of terrorist movements are real ...
Far-Right Terrorism: The Christchurch Attack and Potential Implications on the Asia Pacific Landscape
September 18, 2023The terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand is a landmark in far-right terrorist behaviour within the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The Australian far-right terrorist held both domestic and transitional connections to other far-right extremist groups and travelled extensively before committing the attack in New Zealand. The assailant’s proficiency with weaponry and technology is considerable, as ...