Radicalisation

The threat posed by terrorism today is changing rapidly—as have methods of study of this phenomenon, including analysis of radicalisation and the ‘terrorist cycle’. This chapter takes a qualitative approach to one aspect of contemporary terrorism, self-directed (‘lone wolf’) terrorism by right-wing extremists. Predominately plaguing the USA at first, solo actor terrorism by fascist extremists ...

In this study, and with a view to extending upon existing findings on the effects of general violent media on violent cognitions, we experimentally measured the relationship between exposure to extremist propaganda and violent cognitions. Our results countered our hypotheses and the wider findings of violent media and aggression that exposure to violent stimuli increases ...

Online platforms are used extensively as a propaganda tool to convince young people to support the various groups fighting in Iraq and Syria. Many individuals outside of the conflict partake in propaganda efforts on social media, using their profiles to provide electronic support to ISIS and other extremist groups. An analysis of various profiles indicates ...

The 8th Euromed Survey conducted by the European Institute of the Mediterranean touches upon a number of important and complex issues related to violent extremism in the EuroMediterranean region, including the question of the context and drivers through which violent extremism can prosper. Echoing some of the results, this article looks into propaganda as a ...

Does social media lead vulnerable individuals to resort to violence? Many people believe it does. And they respond with online censorship, surveillance and counter-speech. But what do we really know about the Internet as a cause, and what do we know about the impact of these reactions? All over the world, governments and Internet companies ...

Today, the Commission presents guidelines and principles to increase the proactive prevention, detection and removal of illegal content inciting hatred, violence and terrorism online. The increasing availability and spreading of terrorist material and content that incites violence and hatred online is a serious threat to the security and safety of EU citizens. ...

Violent Jihadist movements have increasingly produced online English language magazines in order to encourage young Muslims into terrorism. This article argues that sociological approaches to the study of these magazines should engage with theories of political myth, understood as the collective “work” on dramatic and figurative narratives which provide significance to the political conditions of ...

The internet has profoundly changed the way we communicate, including how jihadist groups seek to reach Western audiences with their propaganda strategies. Cases of believed online-radicalization call for a re-evaluation of radicalization processes, previously thought to depend on face-to-face interactions. Based on the Hoffman-Sageman debate on whether top-down or bottom-up processes drive terrorism, this essay ...

Nowadays, Social Networks have become an essential communication tools producing a large amount of information about their users and their interactions, which can be analysed with Data Mining methods. In the last years, Social Networks are being used to radicalise people. In this paper, we study the performance of a set of indicators and their ...

There is an emerging consensus that ideologically-based narratives play a central role in encouraging and sustaining radicalization to violence, and that preventing, arresting, or reversing radicalization requires some means by which to address the effects of these narratives. Countering violent extremism (CVE) is a broad umbrella phrase that covers a wide array of approaches that ...