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The multistakeholder Global Network Initiative (GNI) reviewed more than twenty recent governmental initiatives that claim to address various forms of online harm related to user-generated content — a practice we refer to broadly as “content regulation.” We focused on proposals that could shift existing responsibilities and incentives related to user-generated content. Our analysis illustrates the ways that good governance and human rights principles provide time-tested guidance for
how laws, regulations, and policy actions can be most appropriately and effectively designed and carried out. Because content regulation is primarily focused on and likely to impact digital communication and content, we use international human rights principles related to freedom of expression and privacy as our primary lens.

The paper maintains the complementary nature of technological practice and discursive content in the process of meaning-making in digital jihadist discourse. The study shows that digital practices of strategic sharing, distribution and campaigns to re-upload textual materials are made possible by exploiting SMC communicative affordances. As for the analysis of discursive content, the paper focuses on YouTube and highlights strategic patterns and covert references in an IS-produced flagship video. It illustrates how IS discourse constructs its envisaged in-group/outgroup by (re-)symbolising current events within historical, political and ideological conflict scenarios, i.e. the incessant resistance and legitimacy of forces of virtue vs evil. By foregrounding symbolic references to military outgroup actors, IS legitimises its own violence and projects a powerful self-identity against a (perceived) global hegemony. The paper shows how the combination of a technologically savvy operation and a resistant, anti-hegemonic narrative, embedded in a strategically framed symbolism of Islam, may resonate with global (quasi)-diasporic digital consumers.

Since the advent of the Internet, right-wing extremists and those who subscribe to extreme right views have exploited online platforms to build a collective identity among the like-minded. Research in this area has largely focused on extremists’ use of websites, forums, and mainstream social media sites, but overlooked in this research has been an exploration of the popular social news aggregation site Reddit. The current study explores the role of Reddit’s unique voting algorithm in facilitating “othering” discourse and, by extension, collective identity formation among members of a notoriously hateful subreddit community, r/The_Donald. The results of the thematic analysis indicate that those who post extreme-right content on r/The_Donald use Reddit’s voting algorithm as a tool to mobilize like-minded members by promoting extreme discourses against two prominent out-groups: Muslims and the Left. Overall, r/The_Donald’s “sense of community” facilitates identity work among its members by creating an environment wherein extreme right views are continuously validated.

This report looks at journalism and social media reporting in Nigeria. The author raises key implications in journalistic reporting by looking at the 2014 #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign. This study importantly takes both a local and a global perspective on Nigeria’s media reporting.

This report is part of a wider project, led by the International Centre for Counter- Terrorism (ICCT) – the Hague, and funded by the EU Devco on “Mitigating the Impact of Media Reporting of Terrorism”. This project aims to produce evidence-based guidance and capacity building outputs based on original, context-sensitive research into the risks and opportunities in media reporting of terrorism and terrorist incidents. The role of media reporting on terrorism has been under investigated and is an underutilised dimension of a holistic counter-terrorism strategy. How the media reports on terrorism has the potential to impact counter-terrorism (CT) perspective positively or negatively.

Although regulation frameworks of terrorist and harmful content online have been passed by governments in recent years, regulation in practice remains mostly a matter of solo or self-regulation by the tech sector. That is, when companies draft and apply their own rules for moderating user-generated content on their platforms or when they voluntarily comply with standards shared amongst the tech sector (the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism is one example), without such standards being enforced by law. This, coupled with increased public pressure to address the potential harmful impact of certain online content – in particular terrorist material – has led major tech companies to develop their own councils, consortiums, and boards to oversee their content moderation and its impact on freedom of speech online. In this blogpost, we provide an overview of some of the prominent tech sector initiatives in this area.

In this post, we look at academic analysis of global efforts to regulate online content and speech.