The Islamic State’s Ideology & Propaganda
September 18, 2023
On March 11, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World convened a panel to launch two new Brookings papers that break down the ideology and social media methods of the Islamic State to trace how the group rose in influence to become a global jihadi movement. ...
Jean-Paul Laborde (CTED) and Humera Khan (Muflehun) on Terrorism Online – Media Stakeout (17 December 2015)
September 18, 2023
Informal comments to the media by Mr. Jean-Paul Laborde, Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of CounterTerrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and Mrs. Humera Khan, Executive Director of Muflehun, on terrorism online. ...
Fractured Narratives And Popup Diaspora
September 18, 2023
The problem of terrorism is both an immediate threat and a long-term issue of safety and social cohesion, locally and globally. An immediate threat requires relatively straightforward interventions. Our public debates seem to be focusing too much on “fire- fighting” crisis management, and congratulating ourselves on instant emotional displays of solidarity, without paying enough attention ...
Modified Frequency-Based Term Weighting Scheme for Accurate Dark Web Content Classification
September 18, 2023
Security informatics and intelligence computation plays a vital role in detecting and classifying terrorism contents in the web. Accurate web content classification using the computational intelligence and security informatics will increase the opportunities of the early detection of the potential terrorist activities. In this paper, we propose a modified frequency-based term weighting scheme for accurate ...
Public Lecture by VOX-Pol Research Fellow Nico Prucha: Understanding the ‘Islamic State’ Narratives
September 18, 2023
Dr Prucha discusses how to understand ‘Islamic State’ narratives by analysing their media output. The lecture was organised by VOX-Pol partner institute, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and held at King’s College London on 6 July 2015. It focuses on the symbiotic relationships between ideology, media content and strategic action, and on ...
Differential Online Exposure to Extremist Content and Political Violence: Testing the Relative Strength of Social Learning and Competing Perspectives
September 18, 2023
The present study applies Social Learning (Differential Association) Theory to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through new social media (NSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using (a) a paper-and-pencil study among high school students, and (b) a web survey targeting youths between ...
Making Friends and Enemies on Social Media: The Case of Gun Policy Organizations
September 18, 2023
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of interest groups in the formation of online echo chambers and to determine whether interest groups’ use of social media contributes to political polarization. This study used a content analysis of nearly 10,000 tweets (from 2009 to 2014) by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun ...
Association between volume and momentum of online searches and real-world collective unrest
September 18, 2023
A fundamental idea from physics is that macroscopic transitions can occur as a result of an escalation in the correlated activity of a many-body system’s constituent particles. Here we apply this idea in an interdisciplinary setting, whereby the particles are individuals, their correlated activity involves online search activity surrounding the topics of social unrest, and ...
Jihadi Video and Auto-Radicalisation: Evidence From an Exploratory YouTube Study
September 18, 2023
Large amounts of jihadi video content on YouTube along with the vast array of relational data that can be gathered opens up innovative avenues for exploration of the support base for political violence. This exploratory study analyses the online supporters of jihad-promoting video content on YouTube, focusing on those posting and commenting upon martyr-promoting material ...
Pro-Violence and Anti-Democratic Messages on the Internet
September 18, 2023
Foreword-The standard media image of violent extremism may seem to be far from the ordinary work of the Swedish Media Council. While extremism is often described in dramatic terms of terrorism, attacks and riots, the Council’s work concerns more everyday things, such as age limits for cinema films and media awareness teaching in pre-school. But ...