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In considering how terrorist movements use the Internet, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we must move beyond predominantly descriptive overviews of the contents of websites to examine in more detail the notion of virtual communities of support and the functions of these for their members. Virtual communities in support of terrorist movements are real social spaces where people interact on a regular basis to disseminate their views, share their knowledge, and encourage each other to become increasingly supportive of movements that use terrorism to achieve their goals. Taken from a larger body of comparative qualitative research investigating the content and function of discourses created in virtual communities in support of terrorism, this article presents a thematic analysis of “Stormfront,” a virtual community of the radical right.

This article applies instruments of social network analysis to a study of communication networks within the Italian and German extremist right. Web links between organizational websites are used as a proxy. Indeed, extremist groups increasingly use and abuse the Internet for their propaganda and their recruitment, and also for their internal communication. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organizations, even violent groups. In a macro-, micro-, and meso-analysis, the various specificities of the two national political sectors are demonstrated and linked to the offline reality. The Italian network appears to be very fragmented, highly diversified, and difficult to be coordinated (‘policephalous network’), whereas the German network is denser and much more concentrated on a few central actors (‘star structure’). These differences are mainly due to political opportunity structures in the two countries. Additionally, whereas the Italian network structure allows for the construction of a typology of sub-groups of organizations, the German communicative structure seems to be more erratic and less coordinated. The article also highlights the function of websites which are not related to any specific group. Indeed, these are of special importance for the far right as a political arena which is usually banned from the dominant societal discourses (if not even legally forbidden). Considering this, new modes of communication can be of greater use for extremist groups than for more traditional political actors.

Progressive political movements and activists are not the only ones appropriating Web 2.0 as a way to construct independent public spaces and voice counter- hegemonic discourses. By looking at the other extreme of (post-)fascist movements, it will be shown that the internet also gives rise to anti-public spaces, voicing hatred and essentialist discourses. In this article, discourses of hate produced by North- Belgian (post-)fascist movements and activists will be analysed. Theoretically the analysis is informed by radical pluralism and the limits of freedom of speech in a strong democracy. The cases presented challenge the limits of freedom of speech and of radical pluralism and bring us to question whether being a racist is a democratic right, whether freedom of speech includes opinions and views that challenge basic democratic values.

Managing external communication has proven an increasingly significant concern to Lebanese Hizb’allah. The nature of how Hizb’allah conducts its external communication is the subject of the present report. It is argued that the organisation relies on a sophisticated strategy that enables it to address a variety of target groups efficiently with differentiated aspects of its particular ideologically informed message, using the particular media platform best suited for this purpose. In doing so, the communication serves two main objectives: First, to disseminate aspects of the organisation’s religiously informed world-view, ideology, values, motives and moral codes; and secondly, to conduct psychological warfare against its enemies. The report falls into three parts. First, the versatility and comprehensiveness of the external and internal media used by Hizb’allah are outlined. The versatility others Hizb’allah an opportunity to convey its message flexibly to audiences on a local, national, regional and international basis, while simultaneously being able to diferentiate its message. In the second part, attention is turned to the content of Hizb’allah’s communication, all of which is permeated by a clear ideological agenda. Two ideological tenets serve as a minimal ideological structure on which additional ideological layers are added, depending on who is being addressed. e two primary tenets are an antagonistic world-view and the primacy of resistance, epitomizing armed resistance. Thirdly, it is shown how Hizb’allah employs differences in foci, rhetoric and media organisation to convey different layers of its ideological package depending on which group is at the receiving end of the special media being utilised.

The internet plays a contributory role in radicalisation, but is only one of a number of mechanisms currently deployed to win recruits to global jihad. Technical regulation of online content is difficult and may be counter-productive, driving forums deeper underground or alienating users. Tim Stevens argues that adopting a social approach that educates and empowers online communities could have more success.

As the Internet has become a mainstream communications mechanism, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have developed new surveillance capabilities and been given new legal powers to monitor its users. These capabilities have been particularly targeted toward terrorism suspects and organizations that have been observed using the Internet for communication, propaganda, research, planning, publicity, fundraising and creating a distributed sense of community. Policing has become increasingly pre-emptive, with a range of activities criminalized as `supporting’ or `apologizing for’ terrorism. The privacy and non-discrimination rights that are core to the European legal framework are being challenged by the increased surveillance and profiling of terrorism suspects. We argue that their disproportionate nature is problematic for democracy and the rule of law, and will lead to practical difficulties for cross-border cooperation between law enforcement agencies.