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The edition of Dabiq, the online magazine of the Islamic State (IS), that followed the horrific Paris attacks (130 dead) glorified the work of what it called the “eight knights” who carried out the killings. It rejoiced, too, in the downing of a Russian airliner (224 dead), picturing the homemade bomb it said caused the crash. together, these constituted what the magazine called “blessed attacks” against “crusader nations”. Other “brave knights” who carried out terrorist attacks in Australia, America, Israel and Jordan in the autumn of 2015 are said to have “sacrificed their souls in the noblest of deeds in pursuit of Allah’s pleasure”.

The digital era of information technology appears to be a new space and place for the Indonesian Shiite communities to express their existence and conceal their “cloak” in the country.. Internet, websites, Facebook pages, Blog spots, and Twitter are tilized by these Shiite followers and supporters to show their presence, activities, interactivity, and thoughts about Islam. Responding to those Shia media, the anti-Shia movements such as the fundamentalist Sunnis, the Wahabi-Salafi’s, the Wahabi-Takfiri’s supporters have created their online publications and fan pages to counter those Shia’s publications. The online media battles on sectarianism issue then have sparked in the cyberspace of Indonesia in the last three years. Using a critical cultural studies tradition and textual approach, this study tries to examine the rise of Shia and anti-Shia online media as well as the meanings and contexts in which violent actions occurred amongst the Sunni-Shia Muslim communities on it. This paper also attempts to look closely at the way the media writes, covers, and build opinions and attitude to inform and provoke the public.

This exploratory study examines the narrative space of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Specifically, we developed a methodology to gather, archive, and analyze ISIL’s online presence in social media. Our sample was drawn from transient websites (N = 8308) collected between August 2015 and October 2015. From this pool, we coded a random sample of 100 English-only articles for violent, pragmatic, and ideological themes. Exploratory factor analyses revealed two constructs: violence and ideological rationality. Our findings offer insight into the messaging and organizational dynamics of ISIL. We conclude with implications and future directions.

Aiming to critically review key research on populism, extremism and media, this article examines some definition aspects of populism as a concept, its relation to ‘the people’ and points to future directions for research in mainstream – and social media – the terrain where so much of the political is played out. An individualisation of civic cultures has emerged in tandem with the growth of mediated populism through the use of new technologies, with a tendency towards personalisation in the public domain. While the new technological affordances exemplified by Web 2.0 may have contributed to intensified forms of popular engagement, they have been less successful in promoting democratic values, as shown by the results of the May 2014 European Parliamentary elections. Thus, the question as to the type of publics that are ‘possible and desirable in present circumstances’ (Nolan, 2008: 747) remains valid, for publics can espouse anti-democratic values while nevertheless remaining ‘publics’. The fact that the link between the new media and right-wing extremism has been comparatively explored at greater length than that of a religious bend indicates the need to invest in the latter, especially due to home-bred Islamic terrorism increasingly seen as threatening the multiculturalism of various European societies. Several avenues for research are presented to this effect, with a final reflection on the challenge posed by new media to the concept of media populism, both in terms of the Net’s market logics and the specificity of its architecture.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) concerns itself with the issue of its citizens becoming radicalized and joining extremist groups. Daesh is one such group that is able to attract people from varying backgrounds to commit violent acts of terror. Moreover, Daesh encourages those in the West to migrate to their controlled territory to participate in the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq. The group relies on women to participate in this migration so that they can marry jihadis and raise the next generation of supporters. This paper examines how Daesh radicalizes these women, specifically second-generation Muslim women in the UK. Daesh uses social media to radicalize recruits and this holds true in their strategy for incorporating women into their self-declared caliphate. Once women have migrated to Daesh-controlled territory, they themselves act as radicalization agents via social media. This paper uses Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities as a way of formulating how Daesh constructs its own community through pseudo-nationalism that is able to radicalize young people in the West who are part of a diasporic group and do not have particularly strong ties to their ancestral culture and religion. To facilitate the radicalization of secondgeneration Muslim women in the UK, Daesh uses social media to establish a particular image of the caliphate through this pseudo-nationalism. This paper uses a case study of Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, or the ‘Bethnal Green Girls’, to explore the radicalization of SGMW via social media.

2016 is the first year of the implementation of the sustainable development goals. A renewed emphasis on a Human Rights-Based Approach to all forms of development is apt and timely. While migration and peace building as development challenges are not new to humankind, the world is faced with ongoing wars and conflicts as well as new forms of violent extremism triggering levels of migration, that rival only the one that occurred during the Second World War. As a negative and undesirable consequence, all over the world, there has been a sudden rise in incidents of individuals using hate speech against migrants, forced migration and minority communities or social groups, blaming them for their nations’ struggles. The words used in politics, in the news, in social media, in research studies, national reports and general literature or debate about these human phenomena have consequences. History has shown that rhetorical excesses and unbalanced or biased historical accounts of certain events in relation to any ethnic group, place, culture or religion can give rise to a climate of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. It is these prejudices, discrimination and violence that often compromise individual rights or equal rights to all – the right to cultural and religious expressions, the right to security and peace, the right to freedom of expression, the right to education, the right to information, the right to associate or connect et al. Here, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” is breached. It is this reasoning and conscience that the acquisition of media and information literacy (MIL) competencies can stir in all peoples. Furthermore, the ideological beliefs and dogmas that we firmly hold emanate from our socialization. Socialization is embedded in information and communication and increasingly taking place through technological platforms, media and all forms of learning environments. When taken together and coupled with the incidents of the use of social media by extremist and violent organizations to radicalize and recruit especially young minds, the relevance of MIL to enable citizens to challenge their own beliefs effectively and critically engage in these topics, and thus the integration of MIL in formal, non-formal and informal settings becomes more urgent. A rights-based approach to media and information literacy and to sustainable development – including countering hate, radicalization and violent extremism – can play a crucial role in perceptions of the “other” by encouraging reporting, research and analysis as well as the design and implementation of development interventions that are objective, evidence-based, inclusive, reliable, ethical and accurate, and by encouraging individuals to take sound actions based on their rights and the rights of others.