Online Library

The ways in which the Internet can facilitate the expression and spread of racist views and ideologies have been the subject of a growing body of research across disciplines. To date, however, there has been no systematic reviews of this research. To synthesise current knowledge on the topic and identify directions for future research, we systematically review a decade of research on cyber-racism as perpetrated by groups and individuals (i.e., according to the source of cyber-racism). Overall, the cyber-racism research reviewed shows that racist groups and individuals use different communication channels, are driven by different goals, adopt different strategies, and the effects of their communication are distinctive. Despite these differences, both groups and individuals share a high level of skill and sophistication when expressing cyber-racism. Most of the studies reviewed relied on qualitative analyses of online textual data. Our review suggests there is a need for researchers to employ a broader array of methods, devote more attention to targets’ perspectives, and extend their focus by exploring issues such as the roles of Internet in mobilising isolated racist individuals and in enabling ideological clustering of supporters of racist ideologies.

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.

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.

This study is the first to explore the twin influences of online propaganda and news media on Islamists. We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with cognitively and behaviorally radicalized Islamist prisoners in Austria as well as former Islamists in Germany and Austria. We found that online propaganda and news media had interdependent influences on Islamists’ rejections of non-Muslims and Western politics, as well as on their willingness to use violence and commit suicide. Cognitively radicalized individuals were influenced by propaganda that blamed non-Muslims for opposing Islam; this was reinforced by online mainstream news reports of right-wing populism and extremism that propagandists selectively distributed via social media. Among behaviorally radicalized individuals, exposure to propaganda and news reports depicting Muslim war victims contributed to the radicalized individuals’ willingness to use violence. Moreover, propaganda and media reports that extensively personalized perpetrators of violence strengthened radicalized individuals’ motivations to imitate the use of violence.

Thought-provoking and timely, this book addresses the increasingly widespread issue of online political hatred in Europe. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it examines both the contributions of new technologies, in particular social networks, to the rise of this phenomenon, and the legal and political contexts in which it is taking place. Giovanni Ziccardi also evaluates possible remedies for the situation, including both legal and technological solutions, and outlines the potential for a unified European framework to counter the spread of hatred online.

Online radicalisation to terrorism has become a pervasive policy concern over the last decade. However, as a concept it lacks clarity and empirical support. In this article, we add an empirical and theoretical lens to this problem by analysing the trajectories of 231 Islamic State terrorists. We use cluster analyses to create typologies of individuals’ different online and offline antecedent behaviours, including the ways in which they engaged in networks with co-ideologues and how they prepared for their events. The findings suggest four types of pathway within our dataset: 1) The “Integrated” pathway which has high network engagement both online and offline, mostly made up of individuals that plotted as part of a group; 2) The “Encouraged” pathway contains individuals that acted more in the online domain at the expense of offline; 3) Terrorists in the “Isolated” pathway are defined by a lack of interaction across either domain; 4) The “Enclosed” pathway encompassed actors that displayed greater offline network activity, but still utilised the Internet for planning their activity. These typologies help to move beyond the dichotomy of online or offline radicalisation; there remain few individuals that either exclusively use the Internet or do not use it at all. Rather, we can conceptualise Internet usage on a spectrum in which these four typologies all sit.