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This study tests whether social media disinformation contributes to domestic terrorism within countries. I theorize that disinformation disseminated by political actors online through social media heightens political polarization within countries and that this, in turn, produces an environment where domestic terrorism is more likely to occur. I test this theory using data from more than 150 countries for the period 2000–2017. I find that propagation of disinformation through social media drives domestic terrorism. Using mediation tests I also verify that disinformation disseminated through social media increases domestic terrorism by, among other processes, enhancing political polarization within society.

Experts argue that the internet has provided expanded opportunities for violent extremist groups to propagandize and recruit. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is an exemplar in that it has heavily invested in an online presence and uses online communities and social media to attract and retain supporters. Does ISIS’s online presence translate into a higher probability that individuals in its target audience will become supporters? In this study, we analyze over 6,000 individuals in six Arab countries to find if those that use the internet to follow political news or to express political views are more likely to support ISIS. We find that respondents who get their news online are significantly more likely to support ISIS than those who follow the news on television or print media. Moreover, those who use online fora for political expression are also more likely to express support for ISIS. Indeed, individuals who engage in online political discussion are more likely to support ISIS than those who engage in conventional political activity, though less than those who engage in contentious political behaviors such as attending a political protest. We conclude with a brief discussion of the academic and policy implications of these findings.

This article claims that the visual image contributes to, reflects and supports the dominant discourse of two powerful armed groups that have operated in Iraq and Syria: the US military and the Islamic State (IS). This research uses multimodal discourse analysis to explore two crucial insights into the ideological power of the visual image: the power of the image as spectatorship or spectacle and the sublime or transcendental nature of the visual image. The authors conclude that US and IS recruitment and propaganda videos share these two crucial ideological elements: pride in the spectacle of their military power, discipline and technologies, and sublime commitment to the act of killing and dying for the cause. In this sense, the US military and IS are brothers in arms.

The association between 4chan and online extremist subcultures has seen increasing academic scrutiny—particularly following the 2019 Christchurch attack by a right-wing terrorist who frequented the anonymous forums. Gender-based extremism features as one (of many) critical subcultures that commands our academic attention, though few studies to date have sought to capture and assess the entire landscape of this phenomenon on 4chan’s most notorious board: /pol/. Drawing on a pre-Christchurch attack dataset extracted from Papasavva et al. (2020), this study investigates how Australians and New Zealanders (ANZ) broadly conceptualize—and debate—women, gender, and sexual violence on 4chan’s /pol/ board. We apply a mixed-methods approach, combining automated machine learning tools alongside expert qualitative analysis. Across nearly 300,000 posts and comments, we show how gender is constructed within this community, and the conjugal order they demand as a result. This order racially and sexually defines gender identities and norms, which are perceived as mechanisms to restore power and dominance to an ethnically and ideologically conforming in-group. Those that violate or disrupt the conjugal order are legitimized as targets of sexual, and gender-based violence. This normalizes far/extreme right gendered constructs across ANZ contexts in support of exclusivist far/extreme right ideological positions.

Academic literature widely assumes that extremist-housing online forums, like 4chan, uniformly celebrate acts of right-wing terrorism (e.g. via “sainthood memes”), such as those committed by Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant. Aside from a handful of exceptions, this body of research typically fails to acknowledge that ideologically likeminded individuals on 4chan also regularly debate the merits of both terrorists and their violent attacks. Our topic modeling of 100 thousand posts on 4chan’s infamous /pol/ board shows—heated—debates over Breivik and Tarrant ranging from celebratory, to condemning, and moral to conspiratorial. We argue that overlooking these debates limits valuable theoretical and practical insights.