The European Far Right and Islamist Extremism on Twitter: From Radicalisation to Political Participation
September 18, 2023
This 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 ...
Rethinking Online Radicalization
September 18, 2023
This article seeks to re-ontologize online radicalization. Individuals becoming terrorists after being exposed to online content have become a prescient concern for academics, policy makers, and journalists. Existing theoretical contributions to the concept have assumed that there are two ontological domains—online and offline—that can be meaningfully separated. This article will draw from several arguments from ...
The role of social media towards fomenting radicalization among youth in Bangladesh
September 18, 2023
The purpose of the study is to identify the role of social media in spreading radicalization among Bangladeshi youth and the factors behind them. The concepts of radicalization and violent extremism have become increasingly prevalent in global politics and development programming during the last few decades and the youths are getting involved through social media ...
Strategic communications: The Pakistan military’s use of social media against terrorism
September 18, 2023
This study examines the Pakistan military’s strategic use of social media in encouraging and sustaining public support for the ongoing war against terrorism in Pakistan. Its findings indicate that the military used significantly different types of strategic frames in response to a fast-changing, evolving security situation in the country. Framing was used strategically to facilitate ...
From solidarity to blame game: A computational approach to comparing far-right and general public Twitter discourse in the aftermath of the Hanau terror attack
September 18, 2023
Terror attacks are followed by public shock and disorientation. Previous research has found that people use social media to collectively negotiate responses, interpretations, and sense-making in the aftermath of terror attacks. However, the role of ideologically motivated discussions and their relevance to the overall discourse have not been studied. This paper ad-dresses this gap and ...
From Traits to Threats – Identification of Personality Traits for Individuals at Risk of Radicalisation on Social Media
September 18, 2023
This Thesis contributes by proposing a method for identifying users believed to be at risk of radicalisation on social media, by utilising the social media networks of already radicalised individuals and a set of indicators derived from related work on radicalisation. In addition, this Thesis provides a new to the field, in-depth analysis of the ...
Mobilizing against Islam on social media: hyperlink networking among European far-right extra-parliamentary Facebook groups
September 18, 2023
The far right is notoriously effective in its use of digital media to mobilize people and to build a sense of collective identity around oppositional cultures. Yet, while research has begun to explore far-right groups’ social media hyperlinking activities, relatively little is known about the purposes and communicative functions of this form of communication. By ...
Radical Right Activities in Nusantara’s Digital Landscape: A Snapshot
September 18, 2023
This study analysed three social media movements linked with extreme right‑wing activities online. Such activities were carried out by right‑wing extremists and those who support their philosophy of nationalism and religious conservatism, whether actively or passively. This study also investigated how themes and narratives from across the globe, such as US political discourse, Russian disinformation ...
Entitlement, Victimhood, and Hate: A Digital Ethnography of the Canadian Right-Wing Social Media Landscape
September 18, 2023
This dissertation is, at its core, an interrogation of white masculinity in Canada’s right-wing spaces. While my interlocutors spent a great deal of time discussing others, namely immigrants, globalist elites, and feminists, through their discourse, they revealed a lot more about themselves and their perceived victimhood (Berbrier, 2000). This victimhood is derived from what Hage ...
The Online Extremist Ecosystem: Its Evolution and a Framework for Separating Extreme from Mainstream
September 18, 2023
In this Perspective, the authors introduce a framework for internet users to categorize the virtual platforms they use and to understand the likelihood that they may encounter extreme content online. The authors first provide a landscape of the online extremist “ecosystem,” describing how the proliferation of messaging forums, social media networks, and other virtual community ...