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On the one hand, the companies in question feel a business incentive to create a digital
environment where their users feel safe, and are increasingly compelled by governments to cooperate in blocking, filtering, countering or removing content or accounts on the grounds of public safety or national security concerns. In addition, users expect the companies to be transparent, accountable, respect privacy and freedom of opinion and expression and guarantee remedy, while also ensuring an open, free and secure internet. This reality has led to greater voluntary engagement of the private sector in efforts to respond to terrorist use of the internet and ICT. This engagement includes industry-driven initiatives and participation in multi-stakeholder and public-private fora focusing on normative, technical and organizational issues, as well as engagement with academia.

Institutional ethics review procedures aim – in principle – to minimise harm and evaluate risks, providing an important space to consider the safety of participants and researchers. However, literature has questioned the effectiveness of the process, particularly for reviewing ‘risky’ topics in a risk-averse environment. This article reports the findings of interviews with 21 researchers of the far right and manosphere to understand how early career researchers perceive and engage with the process as a component of risk management. It argues that scholars experience IRBs struggling to meet their normative goal of ‘no undue harm’ due to a focus on legality and liability whilst lacking topical and methodological expertise. The lack of expertise produced misperceptions of risk, establishing institutional ethics as an obstacle rather than evaluative aid, creating holes in the ‘safety net’ that institutional ethics can provide. These findings contribute to concerns raised about the effective management of risk by early career researchers and the ethical review of ‘sensitive’ topics.

This Whitehall Report compares two P/CVE programmes in Kenya and Lebanon that independently came to the same conclusion: to counter the multiplicity of factors drawing young people into violent extremism, communications and media tools should be recast to serve the needs of young people, rather than treat them as an audience.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

On the heels of reporting that far right extremist militias are once again organizing on Facebook in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, it is urgent for platforms to assess – and immediately act on – threats to the peaceful conduct of elections and the holding and transfer of power.

On March 26th, 2024, a working group of experts met to discuss the relationship between online platforms and election-related political violence. The goal was to provide realistic and effective recommendations to platforms on steps they can take to ensure their products do not contribute to the potential for political violence, particularly in the lead-up and aftermath of the U.S. general election in November, but with implications for states around the world.

Relying on online platforms to “do the right thing” without regulatory and business incentives that reinforce pro-democratic conduct may seem increasingly futile, but we believe there remains a critical role for independent experts to play in both shaping the public conversation and shining a light on where we believe these companies can act more responsibly.

Gaming Community of Practice: The Gaming Community of Practice (GCoP) was formed to foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and innovation among practitioners in the gaming industry alongside global experts. The group aimed to inform the development of best practices and guidance to prevent terrorists and violent extremists (TVE) from exploiting games, gaming-adjacent services, and the gaming community. Leading members of the Extremism and Gaming Research Network (EGRN) produced a series of outputs based on Working Group meetings to guide online gaming companies in better awareness of TVE threats and how to counter them. Galen Lamphere-Englund worked with GIFCT to produce a report on Prevent, Detect, and React: A Framework for Countering Violent Extremism on Gaming Surfaces as well as an annotated 2024 Resource List: Violent Extremism, Radicalization, and Gaming. Rachel Kowert and Sarah Chittick produced a brief guide for companies on Threat Surfaces in Games: Challenges and Best Practices. The group’s gaming platforms also explored how best expanded threat signal sharing could evolve, which will take form further as GIFCT’s Investigator’s Community of Practice in 2025.