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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), like no other terrorist organization before, has used Twitter and other social media channels to broadcast its message, inspire followers, and recruit new fighters. Though much less heralded, ISIS opponents have also taken to Twitter to castigate the ISIS message. This report draws on publicly available Twitter data to examine this ongoing debate about ISIS on Arabic Twitter and to better understand the networks of ISIS supporters and opponents on Twitter. To support the countermessaging effort and to more deeply understand ISIS supporters and opponents, this study uses a mixed-methods analytic approach to identify and characterize in detail both ISIS support and opposition networks on Twitter. This analytic approach draws on community detection algorithms that help detect interactive communities of Twitter users, lexical analysis that can identify key themes and content for large data sets, and social network analysis.

While the extreme right wing (ERW) has not gained a foothold in local or national Irish politics, the country has witnessed a growth in online activism and harassment, and physical protest and violence. This paper explores a case study based on 4876 unique posts from one Irish-based Telegram group active during six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main findings are that: (a) this group was heavily influenced by foreign content and influencers, in particular, American ERW content and conspiracies associated with QAnon; (b) conspiracy theories were not adopted wholesale but adapted for an Irish audience; (c) Irish actors were not passive receivers of US content, and multi-directional exchanges of ideas were witnessed. While generalising beyond the case study analysed in this paper would require further data, this may suggest that Irish influencers are part of a transnational online ecosystem in which ideas and theories are shared and adapted to local contexts. These findings offer insights into the ERW in Ireland and, more generally, how the ERW communicates and spread conspiracy theories across national borders.

Involuntary celibates, or incels, have been of heightened interest to scholars and practitioners due to their ongoing engagement in misogynistic and violent discourse. The incel subculture is complex, requiring unique strategies to develop effective interventions. The present study investigates patterns in incels’ online posting behaviors and whether acceptance of subcultural beliefs is reflected in variations of user engagement and posting behaviors over time. A sample of postings are drawn from a well-known incel-moderated forum and analyzed using group-based trajectory modeling. The results demonstrate that three distinct posting trajectory groups are present. The findings demonstrate heterogeneity among users’ posting behaviors in the forum over time and suggest that variation may be a reflection of users’ subcultural beliefs.

The online presence of incels, or involuntary celibates, has been an increasing security concern for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in recent years, given that self-identified incels – including Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger – used the Internet to disseminate incel ideology and manifestos prior to committing acts of violence. However, little is empirically known about the incel movement in general or their online communities in particular. The present study draws from a set of comments from r/Incels, a now defunct but once popular subreddit dedicated to the incel community, and compares the most highly-upvoted comments (n = 500) to a random set of other comments (n = 500) in the subreddit. This qualitative analysis focuses on identifying subcultural discourse that is widely supported and engaged with by members of the online community and the extent to which incels utilize this online space to reaffirm deviant behavior. Our study underscores the importance, as well as the difficulties, of drawing from online sources like web-forums to generate new knowledge on deviant communities and behaviors. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this analysis, its limitations, and avenues for future research.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

The number of programs dedicated to countering violent extremism (CVE) has grown in recent years, yet a fundamental gap remains in the understanding of the effectiveness of such programs. This is particularly the case for CVE campaigns, which are increasingly conducted in the online space. The goal of this report is to help CVE campaign planners better evaluate the impact of online efforts. It reviews prior assessments of online CVE campaigns, provides recommendations for future assessments, and provides a case study of one particular CVE campaign — the Redirect Method. A limited evaluation of the Redirect Method process variables suggests that the implementers are able to use advertisements linking to counterextremist videos to effectively expose individuals searching for violent jihadist or violent far-right content to content that offers alternative narratives. Users clicked on these ads at a rate on par with industry standards. However, as is the case with other CVE evaluations, this partial evaluation did not assess the impact of the video content on user attitudes or behavior. The potentially highly radical nature of the Redirect Method’s target audience makes evaluation of the campaign particularly complicated and therefore might necessitate the recruitment of former extremists to help gauge audience response. Alternatively, it might be advisable to analyze user comments to understand how a subsample of users respond to the content.