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Researchers and pundits alike regularly describe terrorism as being a theatrical performance that depends on publicity to build recognition, garner attention and command legitimation. Clearly, the mechanical contours of the information environment matter when it comes to determining the opportunities and challenges for both terrorist and counterterrorist success. This article addresses arguably the most singularly significant intermediary for information access in modern society: web search engines. These information gatekeepers play a crucial role in guiding both government and non-state approaches to terror. That said, these tools are associated with bias and malperformance on a number of fronts. This study examines the degree to which different search engine usage might present a differential view of terrorism to different users. I turn to agent-based digital infrastructure as a basis for studying divergent information experiences with a major terrorist incident, specifically the suicide bombing and subsequent small arms attacks on the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 26, 2021. The results are striking, confirming that there is substantial and clear variation in the outputs based around a host of factors—variable queries and query styles, information orientations and subsequent personalization, geographic location and, of course, search engine choice.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Incels are a sub-culture community of men who forge a sense of identity around their perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. In recent years, there has been a small, but growing, number of violent attacks that have been attributed to individuals who identify as incels. The purpose of this study was to use a large sample of incels from the UK and US to establish (a) their demographic make-up; (b) the consistency of their attitudes and beliefs; (c) their adherence to a common world view, (d) how they network with other incels; (e) whether there are cross-cultural differences between incels from the UK and US in the above; and finally, whether there is a predictive relationship between incel mental health, networking and ideology and the extent of their harmful attitudes and beliefs.

Policymakers have recently expressed concerns over the role of recommendation algorithms and their role in forming “filter bubbles”. This is a particularly prescient concern in the context of extremist content online; these algorithms may promote extremist content at the expense of more moderate voices. In this article, we make two contributions to this debate. Firstly, we provide a novel empirical analysis of three platforms’ recommendation systems when interacting with far-right content. We find that one platform—YouTube—does amplify extreme and fringe content, while two—Reddit and Gab—do not. Secondly, we contextualise these findings into the regulatory debate. There are currently few policy instruments for dealing with algorithmic amplification, and those that do exist largely focus on transparency. We argue that policymakers have yet to fully understand the problems inherent in “de-amplifying” legal, borderline content and argue that a co-regulatory approach may offer a route towards tackling many of these challenges.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.