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There is an on-going debate over the role of online activities in the radicalisation process. However, much of this debate has focused on Western countries, particularly in relation to ISIL’s online influence of homegrown terrorism and of foreign fighter travel to Iraq and Syria. Less is known about patterns of online radicalisation in Africa and about the extent to which African national governmental strategies focus on addressing this issue. To address this gap in knowledge, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) commissioned RAND Europe to explore social media use and online radicalisation in Africa.

The Courage Against Hate initiative has been brought together by Facebook for the purpose of sparking cross-sector, pan-European dialogue and action to combat hate speech and extremism. This collection of articles unites European academic analysis with practitioners who are actively working on countering extremism within civil society.

The Global Counterterrorism Forum published this report to compile a non-exhaustive list of governmental good practices regarding strategic communications and social media aspects in preventing and countering violent extremism and terrorism online for GCTF Members – as well as any other interested Government. The good practices expressed in this document were identified in meetings and subsequent discussions with GCTF Members, reflecting their experience in this regard. Moreover, with these recommendations, the GCTF aims to support and complement existing work and initiatives by other international and regional organisations, namely the UN and other relevant stakeholders involved in this context. The good practices are divided into three sections: Section I addresses overarching good practices for preventing and countering violent extremism and terrorism online; Section II addresses good practices for content-based responses; and Section III addresses good practices for communications-based responses.

From March 8 to June 8, 2018, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) conducted a study to better understand how ISIS content is being uploaded to YouTube, how long it is staying online, and how many views these videos receive. To accomplish this, CEP conducted a limited search for a small set of just 229 previously-identified ISIS terror-related videos from among the trove of extremist material available on the platform. CEP used two computer programs to locate these ISIS videos: a web crawler to search video titles and descriptions for keywords in videos uploaded to YouTube, and eGLYPH, a robust hashing content-identification system. CEP’s search of a limited set of ISIS terror-related videos found that hundreds of ISIS videos are uploaded to YouTube every month, which in turn garner thousands of views.

ISIS and other extremist groups, as well as their online supporters, have continued to exploit and misuse Google’s platforms to disseminate propaganda material, despite the company having repeatedly announced increased measures to combat online extremism.1 On July 21, 2017, Google announced the launch of one such measure––its Redirect Method Pilot Program. The program is intended to target individuals searching for ISIS-related content on YouTube and direct them to counter-narrative videos, which try to undermine the messaging of extremist
groups.2 The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) monitors and tracks ISIS and other terrorist organizations’ material on YouTube. Between August 2 and August 3, 2018, CEP reviewed a total of 649 YouTube videos for extremist and counter-narrative content. The result of CEP’s searches highlights the extent of the enduring problem of terrorist content on YouTube and undermines claims touting the efficacy of the company’s efforts to combat online extremism.