Twitter (X)
A Large-Scale Study Of ISIS Social Media Strategy: Community Size, Collective Influence, And Behavioral Impact
September 18, 2023The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has received a tremendous amount of media coverage in the past few years for their successful use of social media to spread their message and to recruit new members. In this work, we leverage access to the full Twitter Firehose to perform a large-scale observational study of ...
Applying Local Image Feature Descriptions to Aid the Detection of Radicalization Processes in Twitter
September 18, 2023This paper was presented at the 2nd European Counter-Terrorism Centre (ECTC) Advisory Group conference, 17-18 April 2018, at Europol Headquarters, The Hague. ...
Blood and Security during the Norway Attacks: Authorities’ Twitter Activity and Silence
September 18, 2023This chapter analyses the Norwegian authorities’ presence on Twitter during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks. Twitter activity by two official institutions is analysed in particular, namely, the blood bank at Oslo University Hospital and the Norwegian Police Security Services (PST). Our findings show that the Norwegian authorities were almost completely absent on Twitter during ...
Social Media in Management of the Terror Crisis in Norway: Experiences and Lessons Learned
September 18, 2023The chapter addresses the question of how crisis and emergency communicators in the justice (police) and health sector in Norway reflect on their use – or lack of use – of social media during the terror crisis on 22 July 2011. We examine how these communicators in the years following the crisis have developed their ...
Social Media and Situation Awareness during Terrorist Attacks: Recommendations for Crisis Communication
September 18, 2023This chapter summarises the findings of a case study on social media activity during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway. Based on these findings and on theories and previous research on the role of social media in situation awareness (SA) configuration during crisis situations, the chapter offers seven recommendations for key communicators in ...
The Transnationalisation of Far Right Discourse on Twitter
September 18, 2023How transnational are the audiences of far right parties and movements on Twitter? While an increasing number of contributions addresses the topic of transnationalism in far right politics, few systematic investigations exist on the actors and discourses favored in transnational exchanges on social media. Building on the literature on the far right, social movements, transnationalism ...
Measuring the Impact of ISIS Social Media Strategy
September 18, 2023Terrorist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have exploited social media such as Twitter to spread their propaganda and to recruit new members. In this work we study the extent to which ISIS is able to spread their message beyond their immediate supporters. Are they operating in their own sphere with ...
Contextual Semantics for Radicalisation Detection on Twitter
September 18, 2023Much research aims to detect online radical content mainly using radicalisation glossaries, i.e., by looking for terms and expressions associated with religion, war, offensive language, etc. However, such crude methods are highly inaccurate towards content that uses radicalisation terminology to simply report on current events, to share harmless religious rhetoric, or even to counter extremism. ...
Tweeting Terror: An Analysis of the Norwegian Twitter-sphere during and in the Aftermath of the 22 July 2011 Terrorist Attack
September 18, 2023This chapter analyses the Norwegian Twitter-sphere during and in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011. Based on a collection of 2.2 million tweets representing the Twitter-sphere during the period 20 July–28 August 2011, the chapter seeks answers to how the micro-blogging services aided in creating situation awareness (SA) related ...
The Alt Right Twitter Census
September 18, 2023The so-called ‘alt-right’ is an amorphous but synchronized collection of far-right people and movements, an umbrella label for a number of loosely affiliated social movements around the world, although its centre of gravity is in the United States. Many factors have contributed to the alt-right’s rise to prominence, but one of the most visible is ...