Radicalisation

Online video sharing platforms such as YouTube contains several videos and users promoting hate and extremism. Due to low barrier to publication and anonymity, YouTube is misused as a platform by some users and communities to post negative videos disseminating hatred against a particular religion, country or person. We formulate the problem of identification of ...

Radicalisation has gained some unusual prominence in the academic circles; maintaining a generic existence not only in the political sector. And with the advent of the Information Communication Technology (ICT), radicalisation has begun to have some virtual dimension even in the remotest of human communities. This study seeks to mobilise a universal awareness on the ...

Radical milieus have been described as specific social environ¬ments whose culture, narratives, and symbols shape both individuals and groups, and the social networks and relationships out of which those individuals and groups develop and emerge. Researcher Peter Waldmann and his co-authors attribute distinct and independent qualities to these environments, portraying them as social entities in ...

Did the Internet play a decisive role in Anders Behring Breivik’s violent radicalization? It has proven difficult to understand if and how the Internet influences radicalization processes leading to political violence (Conway 2012). The Internet constitutes only one out of a wide range of factors with a potential influence on radical and violent behavior. We ...

This article considers claims made by various authors that the use of filtering and recommendation technology on the Internet can deprive certain communities of feedback, and instead amplify groups’ viewpoints, leading to polarization of opinion across communities, and increases in extremism. The ‘echo chamber’ arguments of Cass Sunstein are taken as representative of this point ...

Before the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) leveraged the Internet into a truly modern quasi-state propaganda machine through horrendous online videos, travel handbooks, and sophisticated Twitter messengering, more humble yet highly effective precursors targeted youthful Western Muslims for radicalism, during a time when home grown plots peaked. These brash new entrants into ...

One of the paradoxical effects of the 7 July bombings in London was to expose the ambivalence in the British government’s attempt to wage war on terror by forcefully prosecuting war against those who resort to jihad abroad, actively participating in coalitions of the willing whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, while affording some of Islamism’s ...

We are delighted to announce the launch of the final report of the Mechachal project, one of first academic studies to contextually examine how hate speech emerges and disseminates in social media. Focusing on Ethiopia, and in collaboration with Addis Ababa University, the research team examined thousands of comments made by Ethiopians on Facebook during ...

The main purpose of this policy brief is to highlight the risks of radicalization by utilizing statistical analysis. The main question interrogated here is to determine the relation between the level of social reaction and ISIS’s attacks. These reactions are measured through Google Trends of news, web searches, and video ratings. Methodologically, Turkey, France, Belgium, ...

Advances in digital technologies have provided ample positive impacts to modern society; however, in addition to such benefits, these innovations have inadvertently created a new venue for criminal activity to generate. Combating Violent Extremism and Radicalization in the Digital Era is an essential reference for the latest research on the utilization of online tools by ...