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VOX-Pol Blog post.

Why do people engage in violent extremism? Why do people deem killing others as a reasonable way – the only reasonable way – to get their political voice heard? How do driving a cargo truck into crowds on a promenade or shooting at random believers in a mosque come to be seen as legitimate alternatives? The short answer is that we have no answer. However, over the last 20 years, radicalization has been the cornerstone concept used by academics, media and policymakers to describe how ordinary individuals become violent extremists. Radicalization outlines the process of embracing an extremist ideology and justifying or perpetrating violent actions in the name of such ideology. Originally, the purpose of this concept was to investigate the roots behind the series of jihadist terrorist attacks that shook the heart of Western democracies at the beginning of the 21st century. For instance, the train bombings of Madrid (2004) and London (2005) with a combined death toll of 249 civilians were not carried out by Islamists educated under the banner of Al-Qaeda sponsored madrassas but by second-generation immigrants born and raised within the liberal social fabric of the European Union. As a result, these attacks were labelled cases of homegrown terrorism and their causes were linked to the perpetrators “acting out” a violent Islamist ideology. Explanations harkening back to situational factors like group structure and settings were difficult to digest at that time, probably because it would have amounted to admitting that Western societies could prepare the structural soil conducive to jihadist terrorism. More comforting was framing the perpetrators as vulnerable individuals who fell prey to the luring speeches of unscrupulous recruiters (e.g., preachers, combatants) and led the former to reach the “tipping point” and turn the words into actions (Crone 2016).

“Signposts” provides background information on the publications of the project “Countering Radicalisation in Right-Wing Extremist Online Subcultures” funded by the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ).

In the first part of this report, a brief historical overview of right-wing extremist internet use in Germany is given. The report describes how, since the emergence of the internet, the extreme right in Germany has always found ways to utilise the latest technological and social developments, such as the emergence of Web 2.0, for their own purposes. The first part of the report also presents the state of research on the right-wing extremist online milieu and describes focal points of current research on right-wing extremism.

The second part of the report describes the conceptual preparatory work that preceded the analyses within the framework of the project. This includes, on the one hand, the development of a definition of right-wing extremism for the project. This is because a uniform definition of the term does not exist, but is necessary for concise and transparent research into the right-wing extremist online milieu. Furthermore, in preparation for data driven analyses in the project, interviews with right-wing extremism experts were conducted, which revealed current developments in right-wing extremist internet strategies.

Debates around the effectiveness of high-profile Twitter account suspensions and similar bans on abusive users across social media platforms abound. Yet we know little about the effectiveness of warning a user about the possibility of suspending their account as opposed to outright suspensions in reducing hate speech. With a pre-registered experiment, we provide causal evidence that a warning message can reduce the use of hateful language on Twitter, at least in the short term. We design our messages based on the literature on deterrence, and test versions that emphasize the legitimacy of the sender, the credibility of the message, and the costliness of being suspended. We find that the act of warning a user of the potential consequences of their behavior can significantly reduce their hateful language for one week. We also find that warning messages that aim to appear legitimate in the eyes of the target user seem to be the most effective. In light of these findings, we consider the policy implications of platforms adopting a more aggressive approach to warning users that their accounts may be suspended as a tool for reducing hateful speech online.

The internet clearly matters to terrorists, but online content by itself rarely causes people to carry out terrorist attacks. Responses should therefore not be limited to the mass removal of terrorist content from online platforms.

Extreme militant groups use their media campaigns to share information, recruit and radicalize followers, share worldviews, and seek public diplomacy ends. While previous research documents that various on-the-ground events correspond to changes in the groups’ messaging strategies, studies of how competing militant groups influence one another’s media campaigns are nascent. This study helps fill that gap by examining how successful attacks by one militant group correspond to changes in both the perpetrating and competing groups’ visual media messaging strategies. It examines attack success through the lens of violent acts that result in direct impact (measured through death counts) and indirect impact (measured through traditional media coverage levels). The study utilizes a content analysis of 1882 authority-related images in AQAP’s al-Masra newsletter and ISIS’s al-Naba’ newsletter appearing three issues before and after each attack, and a chi-square analysis comparing four ISIS attack conditions (high death/high media, high death/low media, low death/high media, and low death/low media). The findings show that a high number of resulting deaths, rather than a high level of media coverage, correspond to changes in the media campaigns of both the perpetrators and the competing groups, with key differences in visual content based on group identity.