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VOX-Pol Blog post.

Following the rise in far-right inspired terrorist attacks globally, social media and electronic communications companies have been criticized, mainly by politicians, for allowing far-right extremist content to be available. This article is a comparative legal study focusing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.’ legal provisions regarding the right to freedom of expression, hate crime, and proscription of terrorist organizations. This study found a disparity in the form of expression protected under this right. This disparity widens further when related to hate crime and proscribing groups as terrorist organizations. As such, social media and communications companies have difficulty setting at global level a baseline in determining whether content is legitimate commentary or is extremism promoting or inciting hatred and violence. The article concludes with a recommendation for how states can provide comparable legislation on hate crime as they have done in relation to Islamist inspired extremism. This will assist social media and communications companies in removing content and suspending accounts. These companies are not the guardians of freedom of expression, that is the role of states’ legislatures and judiciary.

This second Video Vortex Reader marks the transition of online video into the mainstream. Staggering statistics of hypergrowth no longer impress us. Massive usage is not an indication of relevance. Heavy use does not automatically translate into well-funded research or critical art practices. Is the study of online video, like most new media topics, doomed to remain a niche activity – or will we see a conceptual quantum leap, in line with the billions of clips watched daily?

This article analyses how jihadist ideology groups discursively represent “the West” and “non-believers” in their online propagandamagazines. In doing so, it contributes to the field of Critical Terrorism Studies conceptually, by considering the voices of violent actors, and methodologically, by illustrating how linguistic tools of enquiry can advance current knowledge of jihadist ideology groups. Our work adopts a case study approach, focusing on the online magazines Inspire and Dabiq, which are part of the propaganda machinery of, respectively, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The analysis reveals a number of similarities and differences in the discursive strategies that these two groups use. On the one hand, both Inspire and Dabiq support and further construct an “us versus them” dichotomy that polarises differences between their jihadist ideologies and those of Westerners/non-believers. On the other, Dabiq’s discursive representation of “the West” targets a wider variety of individuals and groups of people and geographical locations than Inspire’s. Additionally, Inspire places a greater focus on the pejorative construction of “the West” than Dabiq, suggesting that Al-Qaeda places more emphasis than ISIS on presenting “the West” as the enemy of jihad.

Independent review of how Terrorism Act 2000 & of Part 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 were operated in the UK in 2009

VOX-Pol Blog Post.