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This article presents a comparative analysis of online communities of right-wing radicals and Islamists, who are considered to be numerous and dangerous extremist groups in Russian society. The online communities were selected based on the content posted on the largest Russian social networking site VKontakte. The goal of this article is to determine the strategy and tactics employed by extremist online communities for survival on social networking sites. The authors discovered that both right-wing radical and Islamist groups employ similar behavioural techniques, with the mimicry of ideologically neutral content as the most common. In addition, every extremist community also applies some unique methods. For example, if there is a risk of being blocked, right-wing radicals tend to shift their activity and communication to the other Internet-based platforms that are not under state control; however, Islamists prefer to suddenly change the content of their communities (i.e. by using secondary mimicry).

In this article, the authors examine the intensification of liveness and its effects in the Charlie Hebdo attacks that took place in Paris in January 2015. In their investigation they first re-visit the existing theoretical literature on media, event and time, and discuss in particular the relationship between media events and the idea of liveness. They then move on to the empirical analysis of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and demonstrate the aspects of intensified liveness in the circulation of selected tweets. The analysis is based on a multi-method approach developed for the empirical study of hybrid media events. In conclusion, the authors argue that the liveness, experienced and carried out simultaneously on multiple platforms, favours stereotypical and immediate interpretations when it comes to making sense of the incidents unfolding before the eyes of global audiences. In this condition, incidents are interpreted ‘en direct’, but within the framework of older mnemonic schemes and mythologization of certain positions (e.g. victims, villains, heroes) in the narrative. This condition, they claim, further accelerates the conflict between the different participants that took part in the event.

The ISIS videos staging the executions of James Foley and Steven Sotloff are usually understood as devices to deter, recruit, and “sow terror.” Left unanswered are questions about how these videos work; to whom they are addressed; and what about them can so continuously bring new audiences into existence. The evident durability of ISIS despite the imminent defeat of its state, coupled with the political impact of these particular videos, make these questions unusually urgent. Complete answers require analysis of the most understudied aspect of the videos that also happens to be vastly understudied in US political science: the visual mode of the violence. Approaching these videos as visual texts in need of close reading shows that they are, among other things, enactments of “retaliatory humiliation” (defined by Islamists) that perform and produce an inversion of power in two registers. It symbolically converts the public abjection of Foley and Sotloff by the Islamist executioner into an enactment of ISIS’ invincibility and a demonstration of American impotence. It also aims to transpose the roles between the US, symbolically refigured as mass terrorist, failed sovereign, and rogue state, and ISIS, now repositioned as legitimate, invincible sovereign. Such rhetorical practices seek to actually constitute their audiences through the very visual and visceral power of their address. The affective power of this address is then extended and intensified by the temporality that conditions it—what I call digital time. Digital time has rendered increasingly rare ordinary moments of pause between rapid and repetitive cycles of reception and reaction—moments necessary for even a small measure of distance. The result is a sensibility, long in gestation but especially of this time, habituated to thinking less and feeling more, to quick response over deliberative action.

Mit dem Begriff Cybergrooming wird normalerweise die gezielte Ansprache von meist minderjährigen Personen im Internet zum Zweck der Anbahnung sexueller Kontakte bezeichnet. Die Terrorgruppe ISIS hat eine sehr spezielle Form der Propaganda in Kombination mit persönlicher Ansprache junger Frauen und Mädchen entwickelt, die in Kriegs- und Krisengebiete zwecks Verheiratung gelockt werden sollen. So hat ISIS die Kombination aus terroristischer Propaganda und gezielter Ansprache von jungen Frauen und Mädchen perfektioniert und eine eigene Grooming-Systematik entwickelt, die bei propagandaempfänglichen Mädchen den Wunsch nach einer Djihad-Ehe auslöst. Sind die jungen Frauen oder Mädchen erst ausgereist, werden oft ihre Netzwerke aufgegriffen und die „Daheimgebliebenen“ von ihr zur Ausreise aufgefordert. Das vorliegende Kapitel entwickelt aus dem Begriff des Cybergrooming eine theoriegeleitete Form der Beobachtung extremistischen Handelns im Netz und wendet ihn auf den islamistischen Extremismus an, mit Schwerpunkt auf der Rekrutierung von Frauen und Mädchen.

The objective of the proposed open meeting is to assist the Committee to encourage States to better align their efforts in the area of countering terrorist narratives with the Framework and the guidelines contained in Council resolution 2354 (2017). Specifically, participants will be encouraged to:
1. Share information on trends and developments in terrorist narratives and effective measures to counter them, as well as on ways to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of such measures;
2. Discuss the benefits of a whole-of-society approach to countering terrorist narratives that involves a broad range of actors, including Governments, as well as youth; families; women; religious, cultural, and educational leaders; and other concerned civil society actors;
3. Share information on the benefits of countering terrorist narratives by amplifying positive and credible alternatives for audiences vulnerable to terrorist narratives;
4. Identify and analyse key aspects of the exploitation of information and communications technologies (ICT), including the Internet and social media, to disseminate terrorist narratives
5. Discuss ways to strengthen public-private sector engagement in countering terrorist narratives, both online and offline, including with respect to the TaT initiative and the work of the GIFCT
6. Share good practices in, and knowledge of, Member States’ compliance with the relevant international legal standards, including international human rights law, in this context, with respect in particular to the rights to freedom of expression and privacy
7. Encourage continued research into the drivers of terrorism and violent extremism in order to develop more focused counter-narrative programmes.

The use of social media to disseminate extreme political content on the web, especially right-wing populist propaganda, is no longer a rarity in today’s life. Recommendation systems of social platforms, which provide personalized filtering of content, can contribute to users forming homogeneous cocoons around themselves. This study investigates YouTube’s recommendations system based on 1,663 German political videos in order to analyze the homogeneity of the related content. After examining two datasets (right-wing populist and politically neutral videos), each consisting of ten initial videos and their first and second level recommendations, we show that there is a high degree of homogeneity of right-wing populist and neutral political content in the recommendation network. These findings offer preliminary evidence on the role of YouTube recommendations in fueling the creation of ideologically like-minded information spaces.