A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach to Analyzing White Supremacist and Conspiratorial Discourse on YouTube
September 18, 2023
Since the 2016 US Presidential Election, extreme right-wing communities have gained extensive popularity on YouTube, spreading discourses of white supremacy and conspiracy. This paper focuses on how methods drawn from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) can be used to analyze this communication and contribute to research interests within the field of media and communication studies. SFL ...
Countering violent extremism using social media and preventing implementable strategies for Bangladesh
September 18, 2023
Globally, more than 85% of youth use social media daily in the medium of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc., which is more than 70% for Bangladesh. The young population of Bangladesh is rapidly embracing social media through the internet and afflicted with the malaise of countering violent extremism (CVE), often through Facebook. Given the increasing connectedness ...
Social media corporations as actors of counter-terrorism
September 18, 2023
This 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 ...
Salafist Third Spaces and Hybridic Purity on YouTube
September 18, 2023
This case study applies aspects of third space theory (; ) to investigate the activism on the YouTube channel Salafimedia UK (smuk) and their claim to be the self-proscribed “truest” and “purest” Islamic sect. This chapter introduces the somewhat paradoxical concept of “hybridic purity” – an emerging ideology that seeks to encompass pre-modern Islamic practices ...
Recommender systems and the amplification of extremist content
September 18, 2023
Policymakers have recently expressed concerns over the role of recommendation algorithms and their role in forming “filter bubbles”. This is a particularly prescient concern in the context of extremist content online; these algorithms may promote extremist content at the expense of more moderate voices. In this article, we make two contributions to this debate. Firstly, ...
The Fission of the Forbidden: The Popularity of Video Content in an Online Right-Wing Extremist Environment
September 18, 2023
Video platforms such as YouTube provide an environment where the blurred duality between content dissemination and creation facilitates the generation of social networks. Research into online violent extremist environments has often noted the prominence of video-sharing platforms as a means of distributing propaganda and cultivating social networks for purposes of recruitment. This paper draws from ...
YouTube Regrets: A crowdsourced investigation into YouTube’s recommendation algorithm
September 18, 2023
Faced with YouTube’s continuous refusal to engage, Mozilla built a browser extension, RegretsReporter, that allows people to donate data about the YouTube videos they regret watching on the platform. Through one of the biggest crowdsourced investigations into YouTube, we’ve uncovered new information that warrants urgent attention and action from lawmakers and the public. We now ...
Hate, Obscenity, and Insults: Measuring the Exposure of Children to Inappropriate Comments in YouTube
September 18, 2023
Social media has become an essential part of the daily routines of children and adolescents. Moreover, enormous efforts have been made to ensure the psychological and emotional well-being of young users as well as their safety when interacting with various social media platforms. In this paper, we investigate the exposure of those users to inappropriate ...
Freedom of Speech, the War on Terror, and What’s YouTube Got to Do with It: American Censorship during Times of Military Conflict
September 18, 2023
Freedom of Speech, the War on Terror, and What’s YouTube Got to Do with It: American Censorship during Times of Military Conflict ...