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Far right populist politicians and movements have secured high levels of visibility thanks to often compliant media outlets and unregulated digital platforms. The pursuit of media coverage and the communication of rage are no longer incidental but essential to the growth of reactionary populisms. Yet, while prominent liberal media outlets are ‘aghast’ at events such as the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote, little attention has been paid to the structural conditions and policy frameworks that have facilitated the circulation of clickbait and misinformation, together with the incessant coverage of their leaders, that have been exploited by far right movements. This article identifies four areas of ‘media policy failure’ that have nurtured highly skewed media environments and concludes by calling for a new policy paradigm based around redistribution that aims to reconstruct media systems in order to undermine the appeal of populist forces on the far right.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Part 1 of a panel discussion of February 2012 report by British House of Commons describing the internet as ‘a fertile breeding ground for terrorism’. Originally uploaded by 1IslamChannel on 28 March 2012.

The role of the internet in radicalizing individuals to extremist action is much discussed but remains conceptually and empirically unclear. Here we consider right-wing and jihadist use of the Internet – who posts what and where. We focus on extremist content related to radicalization to violent action, and argue that victim videos and jihad videos are particularly powerful in moving individuals to radical action. We interpret these two kinds of video as complementary parts of the kind of mobilization frame studied by social movement theorists. Finally we consider various kinds of government effort to control extremist content on the Internet.

The purpose of this status report is to create an overview of the challenges related to right-wing and left-wing extremism in Denmark. The report will form part of a more comprehensive mapping launched partly with a view to concretising and targeting the preventive effort. The present report is based on existing and ongoing research in the area. It is a concrete and fact-based report which aims to identify where in present-day Denmark extreme political problems exist – and what kind of issues the Danish society is facing as a result of this. The report is not a mapping or an exhaustive account of the right-wing and left-wing extremist environments, but rather an attempt to establish a knowledge base which may serve as a foundation for such an investigation. Thus, the report reflects existing research on political extremism in Denmark, which is still relatively limited in scope. Consequently, the report also reflects the researcher‟s own observations and analyses of current developments in political extremism. Furthermore, the future mapping will be based on a quantitative investigation.