“You Need to Be Sorted Out With a Knife”: The Attempted Online Silencing of Women and People of Muslim Faith Within Academia
September 18, 2023
Academics are increasingly expected to use social media to disseminate their work and knowledge to public audiences. Although this has various advantages, particularly for alternative forms of dissemination, the web can also be an unsafe space for typically oppressed or subordinated groups. This article presents two auto-ethnographic accounts of the abuse and hate academics researching ...
Toepassing Social Media Data-Analytics voor het Ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie
September 18, 2023
In opdracht van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum (WODC) van het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie (VenJ) heeft Coosto een verkennende studie uitgevoerd naar mogelijke nieuwe social media toepassingen voor VenJ. Deze studie beoogt primair nieuwe toepassingen in kaart te brengen of bestaande toepassingen te herformuleren zodat ze bruikbaar zijn voor VenJ. Het daadwerkelijk ontwikkelen ...
Understanding Online Radicalisation Using Data Science
September 18, 2023
What characterises social media radicals? And why some people become attracted to radicalisation? To explore answers to these questions, a number of tweets posted by a group of suspected radicals tweeting in Arabic were analysed using social network analysis and machine learning. The study revealed that these suspected radicals’ networks showed significant interaction with others; ...
The Advocacy of Terrorism on the Internet: Freedom of Speech Issues and the Material Support Statutes
September 18, 2023
The development of the Internet has revolutionized communications. It has never been easier to speak to wide audiences or to communicate with people that may be located more than half a world away from the speaker. However, like any neutral platform, the Internet can be used to many different ends, including illegal, offensive, or dangerous ...
Nazis vs ISIS on Twitter: A Comparative Study of White Nationalist and ISIS Online Social Media Networks
September 18, 2023
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has distinguished itself as a pioneer in the use of social media for recruitment. But, while ISIS continues to be one of the most influential terrorist groups in the material world, other extremists are closing the gap in the virtual realm. On Twitter, ISIS’s preferred social platform, American ...
Us and them: identifying cyber hate on Twitter across multiple protected characteristics
September 18, 2023
Hateful and antagonistic content published and propagated via the World Wide Web has the potential to cause harm and suffering on an individual basis, and lead to social tension and disorder beyond cyber space. Despite new legislation aimed at prosecuting those who misuse new forms of communication to post threatening, harassing, or grossly offensive language ...
Online Social Media in the Syria Conflict: Encompassing the Extremes and the In-Betweens
September 18, 2023
The Syria conflict has been described as the most socially mediated in history, with online social media playing a particularly important role. At the same time, the everchanging landscape of the conflict leads to difficulties in applying analytical approaches taken by other studies of online political activism. Therefore, in this paper, we use an approach ...
Social media and counterterrorism strategy
September 18, 2023
With the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the issue of domestic radicalisation has taken on renewed significance for Western democracies. In particular, attention has been drawn to the potency of ISIS engagement on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Several governments have emphasised the importance of online programs aimed at ...
Quantifying Salient Concepts Discussed in Social Media Content: A Case Study using Twitter Content Written by Radicalized Youth
September 18, 2023
Social Media has become an important source for information about people and real-world events. Its importance is driven largely by the enormous number of people generating and updating content in Social Media platforms. In this report, we measure the extent to which we can accurately measure the salience of topics/concepts that might be of interest ...
Resurgent Insurgents: Quantitative Research Into Jihadists Who Get Suspended but Return on Twitter
September 18, 2023
Jihadists are very active on Twitter but their accounts frequently get suspended. A substantial debate over the effectiveness of suspension has arisen; an important factor is that Jihadists quickly create new accounts, resurging back like a game of whack-a-mole. This causes biases for terrorism and intelligence analysts. Whilst widely acknowledged, little research addresses the problem. ...