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When debates about Islam acquire importance in the public sphere, does the far right adhere to traditional racist arguments, risking marginalization, or does it conform to mainstream values to attain legitimacy in the political system? Focusing on the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, I explore the framing of Islam, discussing how the far right’s nativist arguments were reformulated to engage with available discursive opportunities and dominant conceptions of the national identity. By looking at actors in the protest and the electoral arenas, I examine the interplay between the choice of anti-Islam frames and baseline national values.

I offer a novel mixed-method approach to study political discourses, combining social network analysis of the links between seventy-seven far-right websites with a qualitative frame analysis of online material. It also includes measures of online visibility of these websites to assess their audiences. The results confirm that anti-Islam frames are couched along a spectrum of discursive opportunity, where actors can either opt to justify opposition to Islam based on interpretations of core national values (culture and religion) or mobilize on strictly oppositional values (biological racism). The framing strategy providing most online visibility is based on neo-racist arguments. While this strategy allows distortion of baseline national values of secularity and republicanism, without breaching the social contract, it is also a danger for organizations that made “opposition to the system” their trademark. While the results owe much to the French context, the conclusions draw broader implications as to the far right going mainstream.

In the course of the last years, the European Union (EU) institutions, and the Commission (EC) in particular, have shown a growing concern regarding the use of online intermediary platforms for the dissemination of illegal content, particularly content of terrorist nature. Despite lack of complete certainty and differences between member States about what terrorist content the law prohibits, or even can prohibit consistent with fundamental rights to free expression, the truth is that there is a broad consensus among the national authorities that legislative and regulatory measures should be enacted both at the European and national levels in order to guarantee the swift and almost automatic detection and removal of content related to the commission of acts of terrorism. The political positions and non-binding documents produced so far have progressively incorporated the notion of “responsibility” for intermediaries, although this could not necessarily be equated to a straightforward intention to impose conventional legal liability obligations on such actors. In particular, the initiatives undertaken so far by the EU institutions basically aimed at promoting platforms’ voluntary cooperation with public authorities to detect and remove online illegal content (including terrorist content). Such initiatives include the Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, the Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal speech online, the Guidelines on Freedom of Expression Online and Offline, and the EU Internet Forum. Above all these recommendations, agreements and soft-law standards, the general legally applicable regime has remained so far intact since its approval in 2000:Directive 2000/31/EC, known as the e-commerce Directive, establishes liability exemptions for intermediaries under certain conditions of lack of knowledge of illegal activity or information and expeditious removal and disabling upon knowledge (article 14). The Directive also includes an important provision regarding the absence of any legal obligation for providers to monitor content (article 15).The new proposed Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online, which was the object of a first discussion on September 19-20 during the meeting of EU leaders in Salzburg under the Austrian Presidency, may represent a change in the above mentioned approach.

As the physical territory held by the group known as the Islamic State diminished in 2016-2017, concern
about of the status of the group’s “virtual” caliphate increased. This report focuses on one aspect
of that virtual caliphate: the production of visual propaganda by the group’s ofcial media bureaus.
Using a dataset of more than 13,000 pieces of ofcial visual propaganda distributed from January 2015
to June 2018, this report examines how the production of such pieces has changed over this timeframe
in terms of the number of pieces distributed, the geographic dynamics associated with the production
of propaganda, and the content featured in these products. Through the course of this examination,
several key findings emerge:
Ofcial visual propaganda production has decreased significantly: According to the CTC’s collection
criteria, August 2015 represented the high-water mark for the production of ofcial visual propaganda,
with 754 releases. The low-point occurred in June 2018, with 44 releases. This represents
a 94-percent decrease in visual propaganda production. It is important to note that this decrease
does not account for non-visual production such as text-only tweets.
Despite the decrease, fluctuation in visual propaganda production is likely to continue: At the
macro level, production rebounded slightly in January 2018 before falling of again. This follows a
more sustained rebound in production that occurred in late 2016. At the local media bureau level,
increases and decreases have occurred quite frequently.
Since July 2015, 100 Islamic State media operatives have been announced as being martyred:
Among many reasons for the decrease in propaganda production, one revealed by this report is
the number of media personnel who have been killed. In the first quarter of 2016 alone, 20 such
personnel were eulogized in the group’s propaganda.
Islamic State videos (excluding Amaq and Furat Media Establishment) have been increasing in
length since January 2015: In the first five months of 2015, the average length of an Islamic State
video was a little over six minutes. In the first five months of 2018, this number had increased to
approximately 16 minutes 30 seconds. This may suggest a decreased ability to create narrowly
tailored and targeted videos.
The Islamic State’s media bureaus inside of Iraq and Syria present a worrying sign for the future:
During 2016 and after the liberation of parts of Iraq from formal Islamic State control in December
2017, production of ofcial visual products from Iraqi media bureaus declined. Since that point,
however, production coming specifically from Iraq has rebounded slightly, highlighting the group’s
resilience and potential future threat in the region.
The Islamic State’s media bureaus outside of Iraq and Syria are producing more propaganda as
a proportion of the group’s overall ofcial visual output than ever before: Due to both an overall
decline in production of ofcial visual releases inside Iraq and Syria and a small increase among
some bureaus outside of Iraq and Syria, most notably the Khurasan bureau, the Islamic State’s
media bureaus outside of Iraq and Syria have surpassed 20 percent of overall ofcial visual output
in six of the last nine months. This level of non-Iraq and Syria production had not occurred once
in the preceding 32 months.
The theme of Islamic State ofcial visual releases is overwhelmingly military as opposed to non-military:
In the first quarter of 2015, 53 percent of the group’s ofcial visual releases were non-military
in theme. In this first quarter of 2018, this number had fallen to 15 percent.

The proliferation of extremist, jihadist and violence-inciting websites, blogs and channels in social media has long since become a major theme in security policy. Extremists and terrorists use the new technological tools to communicate with each other, to organise themselves and to publicise their ideas. Whereas terrorists in the previous millennium were still dependent on journalists to report their acts and to draw attention to their group and their ideology, potentially violent groups today are in a position to publish their story and their intentions unfiltered on the web, and to communicate with each other swiftly and effectively across national borders. Ever since the case of Australian teenager Jake Bilardi, who travelled to the territories of the so-called Islamic State (IS)
and in 2015, at the age of 19, committed a suicide attack in Ramadi (Iraq), however, it is not just online communication by extremists that is in focus, but also the phenomenon of online radicalisation. According to the current state of information, Bilardi converted to Islam without any direct influences from his immediate environment, radicalised himself exclusively via online media, and travelled to Syria with the help of online contacts. His case, and many other cases of Western recruits, raised the question of whether a process of radicalisation can take place exclusively online or if online propaganda is only one facilitating factor that promotes and perhaps accelerates radicalization, but is in itself not sufficient to explain the whole process. Unfortunately, there are still not enough systematic, empirical studies on this subject area and our knowledge is generally limited
to known perpetrator profiles. Nevertheless, some general statements can be made regarding online radicalisation.

“Never before in history have terrorists had such easy access to the minds and eyeballs of
millions,” declared one journalistic account of the Islamic State’s propaganda machine and
proficient use of Twitter, Facebook, bots, and other modern means of getting its message out.
Such views that the group’s “mastery of modern digital tools” has transformed terrorism
are commonplace and, though usually presented breathlessly, contain some basic truths.1
Successful terrorist groups are good communicators and they employ the technology of
their times. Fighting terrorism today thus requires fighting terrorism on the Internet and
otherwise countering the use of advanced communications technologies. President Trump
himself stressed this in a tweet after a 2017 terrorist attack in London: “Loser terrorists must
be dealt with in a much tougher manner. The internet is their main recruitment tool which
we must cut off & use better!”2 Terrorists are only one dangerous actor on the Internet—and
the one this paper focuses on—but other dangers ranging from hostile state intelligence
services to criminal groups are also lurking. The above journalist’s quote could also apply to
Russian disinformation, sophisticated criminal phishing attempts, and other malicious uses
of the Internet.
This paper proceeds as follows. First, it examines some of the ways in which terrorist groups
use the Internet, focusing on the Islamic State in particular, and the limits and problems
they have had. Second, it looks at several of the historical problems the US government
has had in stopping this use and at the general issues that are likely to plague future efforts
regarding terrorist use of new technologies. Finally, the paper details some of the parameters
of an Intelligence Reserve Corps, describing its benefits and its limits.

The main objective of this systematic review is to synthesize the empirical evidence on how the Internet and social media may, or may not, constitute spaces for exchange that can be favorable to violent extremism. Of the 5,182 studies generated from the searches, 11 studies were eligible for inclusion in this review. We considered empirical studies with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed designs, but did not conduct meta-analysis due to the heterogeneous and at times incomparable nature of the data. The reviewed studies provide tentative evidence that exposure to radical violent online material is associated with extremist online and offline attitudes, as well as the risk of committing political violence among white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and radical Islamist groups. Active seekers of violent radical material also seem to be at higher risk of engaging in political violence as compared to passive seekers. The Internet’s role thus seems to be one of decision-shaping, which, in association with offline factors, can be associated to decision-making. The methodological limitations of the reviewed studies are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research.