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The Policy Brief and accompanying Guidance Note on utilizing online data to prevent violent extremism and hate speech apply the lessons learned from UNDP practitioners working on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) across seven country offices by undertaking pilot projects that collect, analyse and apply online data to their programming. The Policy Brief outlines the major structural, technical, and ethical challenges faced by the practitioners, analyses relevant existing policy frameworks, and explores the potential of human rights-compliant data driven methods to inform PVE programming by offering policy considerations and recommendations to decision-makers. The Guidance Note offers an overview of key processes, tools, and resources for practitioners to consider when utilizing online data for PVE and addressing hate speech. It promotes risk management as an inherently enabling process for enhancing the evidence base for PVE programming.

Since the inception of video games, extremist groups have been able create, modify, and weaponise this media for activism and their campaigns. More recently, however, the emergence of gaming-adjacent platforms (most notably Discord, Twitch and Steam) has become a key organisational tool for recruitment and community-building; something that policing communities all over the world have been grappling with, especially in regard to the potential for extremist content to create radicalising effects that lead to political violence. This article explores how policing communities are approaching extremist groups on gaming-adjacent platforms, what strategies they’ve been using, and the effect this has on extremist activism -both in the online, but also more crucially in the offline, space. Using semi-structured interviews with 13 leading P/CVE practitioners, academic and technology industry experts, and content moderation teams, what the article finds is that third-party policing communities are increasingly using more sophisticated tactics to combat extremist content but that these efforts are being increasingly frustrated by the networked nature of extremism and a lack of robust enforcement at platform level. In the future, this research suggests that more transparency about terms of service enforcement from above and mitigation of toxic extremist ‘adjacent’ cultures from below might help foster more resilience against the prevalence of extremism on gaming-adjacent platforms.

This chapter examines Europol’s Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) and its role in the privatized governance of online media within the broader context of transnational law enforcement and European counter-terrorism policy. Established in 2015, the EU IRU monitors online content and recommends takedowns to hosting platforms based on breaches of terms of service, not legal violations. By analyzing the discursive practices of the EU IRU, this chapter seeks to understand the (in)security dynamics of online radicalization and assess associated human rights concerns. The core question addressed is how Europol frames radicalization and Internet content. The chapter situates the EU IRU within the wider discourse on counter-radicalization, arguing for a deeper understanding of radicalization as perceived by professionals in the field. A detailed policy analysis highlights the unit’s referral and takedown activities, scrutinizing Europol’s framing of technology as a security issue and radicalization as a problem exacerbated by online communication. The study reveals significant issues such as over-blocking, lack of due process, and absence of recourse for affected users, emphasizing the ethical and human rights implications of private companies acting as arbiters of speech. The conclusion critiques Europol’s approach, noting its inconsistency and inefficacy, and underscores the necessity of transparent and judicially overseen content regulation. This chapter calls for a re-evaluation of current counter-radicalization strategies, advocating for more holistic approaches that balance security needs with fundamental rights and democratic accountability.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

This article introduces the method of podcast ethnography. The method encompasses three general stages: to explore a podcast from a particular social field, to engage with it through careful, ethnographic reflexivity and to examine the podcast by developing typologies and themes expedient for analysis. Podcast ethnography is beneficial due to its spatial and temporal flexibility; observing a podcast universe can be performed on the move and in parallel with other tasks. This advantage enables a much-needed breathing space for researchers inquiring vehement milieus, such as white radical nationalism. The article uses an example from this precise milieu in Sweden – the podcast Motgift [Antidote] – to illustrate and flesh out the potentials and challenges of applying the method’s three stages. In so doing, the article argues for inclusion of podcast ethnography into the extended family of ethnographic methods.