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Online extremism has changed, and censorship by content removal or account suspension alone cannot counteract it. We need a radical new response, argues Louis Reynolds.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Many cases of radicalism, especially violent radicalism, manifest within the context of inter-ethnic conflict and war. Research in this domain has significantly contributed to our overarching comprehension of the issue. This form of radicalism is inherently linked to the dynamics of group affiliation. However, our focus here is directed towards the individual motivation driving radical actions. While radical actions may encompass dynamics of group affiliation (e.g., the most radical pro-life activists being members of the Army of God), they also possess a substantial individual component. For instance, numerous attacks on abortion doctors or clinics are categorized as ’lone-wolf terrorism’.

In this study, we sought to examine whether state-of-the-art Machine Learning tech- nology for text analysis could effectively discern the intent behind radical actions from user-generated content. We analyzed a diverse array of radical texts published online by various activists, including anarchists, Iranian guerrilla members, Indian revolution- aries, activists from the US civil rights movement, and The Army of God. Our analysis reveals that Machine Learning models can successfully identify potential signals indica- tive of the author’s intent behind radical actions.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Depuis le début de la vague d’attentats de Daech en Europe et aux États-Unis en 2015, les géants des réseaux sociaux Meta, Google et Twitter se sont investis dans la lutte contre le terrorisme sur leurs services. Cet article interroge la manière dont ces acteurs privés se sont approprié la catégorie contestée de « terrorisme », à travers une analyse de discours d’un corpus de leurs communications officielles. Celle-ci permet de montrer comment ces entreprises tentent, par diverses stratégies, d’évacuer les enjeux politiques intrinsèques à cette notion, avec un succès mitigé.

VOX-Pol Blog post.