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This research employs the concept of social capital to compare the efforts that a range of tech companies have claimed to take to counter polarization and extremism and build resilience on their platforms. The dataset on which our analysis is based is made-up of a purposive sample of official blog posts from three ‘older’ (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and three ‘newer’ (i.e., TikTok, Discord, and Telegram) technology platforms. The selected posts focused on companies’ efforts to make their platform safer, build community resilience, counter violent extremism and/or polarization, or mentioned related topics such as countering hate organizations, radicalization, or misinformation. Revealed were seven themes incorporating, to a greater or lesser extent, the three main types of social capital (i.e., bonding, bridging and linking). These themes were granting user powers, strengthening existing communities, provision of information and education, building community, enhancing user rights, keeping users safe, and building trust and relationships with users. Analysis of these showed that while creation of all three types of social capital was apparent, similar to previous studies, bridging capital dominated here too; while there were some discrepancies between social capital generating activities and their framings on ‘older’ versus ‘newer’ platforms, other factors, including platform size and company values are likely to be equally or more important; and, finally, that companies attempts at generating online social capital can have negative as well as positive impacts with regard to countering polarization and extremism.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

The seven articles in this special issue were selected from those delivered at a series of workshops undertaken by the European Commission H2020-funded Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism (BRaVE) Project in 2020–2021. Understanding polarization and (violent) extremism as distinct, interlinked, phenomena, the collected articles ask how online platforms can be mobilised to disrupt and reframe ideologies underpinning polarising and extremist messaging. To what extent can social media platforms serve as critical resources that contribute to building pro-social resilience? And, how can we build on what has been effective so far in terms of building online resilience, including what else might social media platforms and their users do to enhance what has already been found to be effective?

Drawing from interviews with 39 online extremism and terrorism researchers, this article provides an empirical analysis of these researchers’ experiences with institutional ethics processes. Discussed are the harms that these researchers face in the course of their work, including trolling, doxing, and mental and emotional trauma arising from exposure to terrorist content, which highlight the need for an emphasis on researcher welfare. We find that researcher welfare is a neglected aspect of ethics review processes however, with most interviewees not required to gain ethics approval for their research resulting in very little attention to researcher welfare issues. Interviewees were frustrated with ethics processes, indicating that committees oftentimes lacked the requisite knowledge to make informed ethical decisions. Highlighted by interviewees too was a concern that greater emphasis on researcher welfare could result in blockages to their ‘risky’ research, creating a ‘Catch 22’: interviewees would like more emphasis on their (and colleagues’) welfare and provision of concomitant supports, but feel that increased oversight would make gaining ethics approval for their research more difficult, or even impossible. We offer suggestions for breaking the impasse, including more interactions between ethics committees and researchers; development of tailored guidelines; and more case studies reflecting on ethics processes.