Online Library

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Online radicalisation to terrorism has become a pervasive policy concern over the last decade. However, as a concept it lacks clarity and empirical support. In this article, we add an empirical and theoretical lens to this problem by analysing the trajectories of 231 Islamic State terrorists. We use cluster analyses to create typologies of individuals’ different online and offline antecedent behaviours, including the ways in which they engaged in networks with co-ideologues and how they prepared for their events. The findings suggest four types of pathway within our dataset: 1) The “Integrated” pathway which has high network engagement both online and offline, mostly made up of individuals that plotted as part of a group; 2) The “Encouraged” pathway contains individuals that acted more in the online domain at the expense of offline; 3) Terrorists in the “Isolated” pathway are defined by a lack of interaction across either domain; 4) The “Enclosed” pathway encompassed actors that displayed greater offline network activity, but still utilised the Internet for planning their activity. These typologies help to move beyond the dichotomy of online or offline radicalisation; there remain few individuals that either exclusively use the Internet or do not use it at all. Rather, we can conceptualise Internet usage on a spectrum in which these four typologies all sit.

New communication technologies are often invested with users’ hopes for change in the social order. Thus the Internet is said to be inherently democratic, levelling traditional distinctions of social status, and creating opportunities for less powerful individuals and groups to participate on a par with members of more powerful groups. Specifically, the Internet has been claimed to lead to greater gender equality, with women, as the socially, politically, and economically less powerful gender, especially likely to reap its benefits.

This article looks at extreme speech practices in Danish weblogs and Facebook comment threads that treat issues of refugees, migration, Islam, and opponents as a cultural war of values and conflict. The article highlights the ritualized ways in which anti-immigrant sentiments are being communicated, received, and responded to. Such recurrent ritualistic communicative patterns include the use of a distinct indignant tone, sarcasm, racialized reasoning, and the use of “high-fives,” as well as a general indifference to facts. The article argues that these online speech patterns can best be understood as a form of “ritualized opposition” that relies on extremist, divisive use of language and naturalization of racialized difference in its attempt to recruit and consolidate communities of support.

It is commonly recognized that social media presents vast new opportunities for terrorist groups seeking to radicalize audiences. However, few scholars have studied the actual mechanisms by which radicalizing messages are delivered to those audiences. Within this paper, the author explores one key aspect of the phenomenon of ‘jihadi cool’ – that is, the rendering of pro-Islamic terrorism into something hip and trendy among online audiences. Discussed is the use of political jamming: a subversive, satirical activity that draws on humor to reinforce ideological messages. The opportunity for countering these messages through the same technique is also considered.

On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform. Given findings of prior research on moderation and hate speech in online communities, the promise of less strict content moderation poses the concern that hate will rise on Twitter. We examine the levels of hate speech and prevalence of bots before and after Musk’s acquisition of the platform. We find that hate speech rose dramatically upon Musk purchasing Twitter and the prevalence of most types of bots increased, while the prevalence of astroturf bots decreased.