Manipulating Access To Communication Technology: Government Repression or Counterterrorism?
September 18, 2023
This report offers a preliminary analysis of the effectiveness of network disruptions in achieving one specific outcome: tackling terrorist violence. It analyses the relationship between network disruptions and deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks to determine whether there is support for the commonly made argument that network disruptions are an important counterterrorism tactic. Using a ...
“Short is the Road that Leads from Fear to Hate”: Fear Speech in Indian WhatsApp Groups
September 18, 2023
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. Due to its popularity, WhatsApp has become a powerful and cheap tool for political campaigning being widely used during the 2019 Indian general election, where it was used to connect to the voters on a large scale. Along with the campaigning, there have been reports ...
Role of Public WhatsApp Groups Within the Hindutva Ecosystem of Hate and Narratives of “CoronaJihad”
September 18, 2023
This article uses the context of the widespread circulation of accounts about “CoronaJihad” in India during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how public WhatsApp groups that participate in disseminating such accounts function within the ecosystem of hate around Hindutva majoritarianism in the country. The manner in which the WhatsApp platform operates within this ecosystem is ...
The Web is a Terrorist’s Command-and-Control Network of Choice
September 18, 2023
People do not want social media platforms to facilitate murder, writes Robert Hannigan ...
Online Social Networks and Terrorism 2.0 in Developing Countries
September 18, 2023
The advancement in technology has brought a new era in terrorism where Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become a major platform of communication with wide range of usage from message channeling to propaganda and recruitment of new followers in terrorist groups. Meanwhile, during the terrorist attacks people use OSNs for information exchange, mobilizing and uniting ...
VOX-Pol Discusses Media Strategies of Violent Radical Groups Online
September 18, 2023
At the end of January, VOX-Pol’s Dr Maura Conway (DCU) and Professor Ian Brown (OII) spoke to Belgian public service broadcaster VRT News on the subject of media strategies used by radical groups online. This a video of the news segment. ...