Online Library

This case study explores the convergence of white extremist political ideology with mainstream political ideology on the micro-blogging platform Twitter – a phenomenon termed “inter-ideological mingling”. Exploring the spread of white extremism in the digital environment can provide insight into the growth of hate groups in the physical environment. A sample of 4800 tweets was examined through hierarchical cluster analysis and textual analysis. Several pieces of evidence were found supporting inter-ideological mingling. Cluster analysis shows that extremist terms are not isolated from terms found in mainstream political discourse. Textual analysis of individual tweets provides evidence for five strategies of inter-ideological mingling: joining, blending, piggybacking, backstaging, and narrating.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

As recent perpetrators of racially-motivated mass-shootings were visitors and contributors to online white supremacist networks, this article presents a preliminary model that attempts to understand the social psychological effects of interacting in these networks. Combining Jonathan Turner’s theory of the social psychological roots of extreme violence, scholarship on the white supremacist movement, and research on computer-mediated communication, it suggests that interactions in online white supremacist networks accelerate the conversion from secondary to tertiary deviance, amplify the negative emotional energy released by this conversion, and, under certain conditions, transform this energy into a violent kinetic force. The model is not unique to online white supremacist networks and will hopefully guide research in other types of networks as well.

From the new Facebook ‘Oversight Body’ for content moderation to the ‘Christchurch Call to eliminate terrorism and violent extremism online,’ a growing number of voluntary and non-binding informal governance initiatives have recently been proposed as attractive ways to rein in Facebook, Google, and other platform companies hosting user-generated content. Drawing on the literature on transnational corporate governance, this article reviews a number of informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe, mapping them onto Abbott and Snidal’s (2009) ‘governance triangle’ model. I discuss three key dynamics shaping the success of informal governance arrangements: actor competencies, ‘legitimation politics,’ and inter-actor relationships of power and coercion.

In this paper we present a novel interactive multimodal learning system, which facilitates search and exploration in large networks of social multimedia users. It allows the analyst to identify and select users of interest, and to find similar users in an interactive learning setting. Our approach is based on novel multimodal representations of users, words and concepts, which we simultaneously learn by deploying a general-purpose neural embedding model. The usefulness of the approach is evaluated using artificial actors, which simulate user behavior in a relevance feedback scenario. Multiple experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the quality of our multimodal representations and compare different embedding strategies. We demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach on a multimedia collection originating from the violent online extremism forum Stormfront, which is particularly interesting due to the high semantic level of the discussions it features.

To see the author talk about the book, Fighting Terror Online, click on the link ‘The Academic Channel,’ under ‘Related links’ on this webpage.
The unprecedented events that have taken place in recent years have led legislators and governments throughout the world to reconsider and restructure their policies regarding security issues. Today, worldwide attention is being given to a new security threat, in the form of global terrorism. Legal systems are being called upon to provide a response to these threats, in all areas of life, including the online environment.
Among its many tools, global terror also uses advanced technological methods. This fact presents a difficult challenge to policymakers. Therefore, we have chosen to focus this book on the issue of formulating appropriate policy at the interface between security and technology, human rights and economic policy.
The fundamental issue – the tension between security needs and civil rights – is not new. A great deal of experience has been amassed in various countries in this regard, and the question that now arises is whether the existing system of principles and laws, developed on the basis of experience gathered in the “concrete” world, is applicable to the “digital” environment.
This book presents the position that the online environment is a significant and relevant theater of activity in the fight against terror, and will identify the threats, the security needs, and the issues that are unique to this environment. We examine whether the unique characteristics of this environment require new legal solutions, or whether existing solutions are sufficient. Three areas of online activity are identified that require reexamination: security, monitoring, and propaganda. For each of these, we will indicate the issues, examine existing legal arrangements, and offer guidelines for formulating legal policy. There is a demonstrated need to relate to the digital environment as a battlefront, map the new security threats, and thereby hope to provide focus to the pressing discussion on today’s legislative and technological agenda.