Twitter (X)
A Context Aware Embedding for the Detection of Hate Speech in Social Media Networks
September 18, 2023Proliferation of social media platforms in recent past has resulted into upsurge in the number of users. Advent of these sites have paved way for the users to easily express share and communicate. In such a scenario, it is imperative to analyze the content and identify nasty content so as to avoid unpleasant situations. Machine ...
Short of Suspension: How Suspension Warnings Can Reduce Hate Speech on Twitter
September 18, 2023Debates around the effectiveness of high-profile Twitter account suspensions and similar bans on abusive users across social media platforms abound. Yet we know little about the effectiveness of warning a user about the possibility of suspending their account as opposed to outright suspensions in reducing hate speech. With a pre-registered experiment, we provide causal evidence ...
An influencer-based approach to understanding radical right viral tweets
September 18, 2023Radical right influencers routinely use social media to spread highly divisive, disruptive and anti-democratic messages. Assessing and countering the challenge that such content poses is crucial for ensuring that online spaces remain open, safe and accessible. Previous work has paid little attention to understanding factors associated with radical right content that goes viral. We investigate ...
The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not My Friend: Arabic Twitter Sentiment toward ISIS and the United States
September 18, 2023A counter-intuitive finding emerges from an analysis of Arabic Twitter posts from 2014 to 2015: Twitter participants who are negative toward the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) are also more likely to hold negative views of the United States. This surprising correlation is due to the interpretations of two sets of users. ...
New forms of cultural nationalism? American and British Indians in the Trump and Brexit Twittersphere
September 18, 2023Diaspora networks are one of the key, but often invisible, drivers in reinforcing long-distance nationalism towards the ‘homeland’ but simultaneously construct nationalist myths within their countries of residence. This article examines Indian diaspora supporters of Brexit and Trump in the United Kingdom and the United States who promote exclusionary nationalist imaginaries. Combining quantitative and qualitative ...
Social media corporations as actors of counter-terrorism
September 18, 2023This article discusses the role of giant social media corporations Facebook, Google (YouTube), and Twitter in counter-terrorism and countering violent extremisms (CT/CVEs). Based on a qualitative investigation mobilizing corporate communications as well as a collection of interviews with European stakeholders, it argues that these firms have become actors in this policy area of what is ...
From Tweeter to Terrorist: Combatting Online Propaganda When Jihad Goes Viral
September 18, 2023From Tweeter to Terrorist: Combatting Online Propaganda When Jihad Goes Viral ...
Terrorist Communications: Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google Responsible for the Islamic State’s Actions?
September 18, 2023Four of the world’s largest Internet companies pledged to monitor, combat, and prevent terrorists from using their social media platforms to conduct operations in May 2016. One month later, Twitter, Facebook, and Google were sued for deaths caused by the Islamic State in 2015, and their alleged allowance and facilitation of terrorist communication. A growing ...
Tweeting Terror Live: Al-Shabaab’s Use of Twitter during the Westgate Attack and Implications for Counterterrorism Communications
September 18, 2023This article will analyze the motivations for and use of live-tweets during a terrorist attack. The employment of live-tweets offers terrorist groups the opportunity to adopt the role of a media outlet to exploit the advantages of live coverage typically exercised by mainstream media. This poses a unique challenge to policy makers and international media ...
A Snapshot of the Syrian Jihadi Online Ecology: Differential Disruption, Community Strength, and Preferred Other Platforms
September 18, 2023This article contributes to the growing literature on extremist and terrorist online ecologies and approaches to snapshotting these. It opens by measuring Twitter’s differential disruption of so-called “Islamic State” versus other jihadi parties to the Syria conflict, showing that while Twitter became increasingly inhospitable to IS in 2017 and 2018, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar ...