Online Library

This report analyses memes propagated among three online socio‐political groups drawn from sample datasets pulled from social media sites often used by adherents of each group. These groups include those connected to the India‐based Hindutva, US‐based neo‐Nazis and those engaging in pro‐Rittenhouse communications in late 2020. The authors chose the groups based on similarities in their ideological goals, race‐based nationalism and their close association with political violence in their respective countries.

The backbone of the “skull mask” transnational neo-fascist accelerationist network—whose nodes include terror groups such as Atomwaffen, the Base, and Feuerkrieg Division—is a group of organizations that grew out of Iron March, a neo-fascist web forum that was active from 2011 to 2017. The history of the Iron March network shows that violent extremist movements can develop from online communities even in the absence of a territorial base and without regular in-person contact between members. Iron March provided a closed social space where young neo-fascists who did not fit in well in established neo-fascist organizations could create a transnational collective identity. Eventually, Iron March users sought each other out in person and created local groups that remained networked together by virtue of their common origin in the community created on the web forum. The network’s transition from activism to terrorism was facilitated by the introduction of violent ritualistic initiation practices derived from the writings of the Order of Nine Angles, which helped to habituate members to violence as well as to create a sense of shared membership in a militant elite.

While the interest in Salafi-jihadism and the digital arena is not a new phenomenon, a limited amount of research has focused on the specific strategies and narratives disseminated by local groups and online supporter communities at the national and international level. The editors provide a brief introduction to the issue of Salafi-jihadism and digital media within the Swedish context, and further define the aim and research questions of the volume at hand. In addition, the current chapter defines some of the key concepts used throughout the volume, and further discusses some additional methodological considerations.

Globally, more than 85% of youth use social media daily in the medium of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc., which is more than 70% for Bangladesh. The young population of Bangladesh is rapidly embracing social media through the internet and afflicted with the malaise of countering violent extremism (CVE), often through Facebook. Given the increasing connectedness that the internet and social media offer, it is crucial that the fight against CVE shift to the digital space. Extremists are increasingly adopting novel ways and means based on technology to draw unsuspecting youth to their cause. It is essential to establish effective implementable strategies to stop the CVE activities using social media in Bangladesh. This study aims to identify existing initiatives globally in the space of disruptive online technologies that have yielded some success in preventing CVE. Various publications such as journal and news articles, TV news, and blogs have been used as data sources for this study. Also, fifteen expert interviews have been conducted to identify the most effective strategies for CVE in Bangladesh. Through the content analysis, the study highlights successful efforts and explores technology-based initiatives that can be deployed in Bangladesh to minimize the impact of VE activities through online technology. Finally, recommendations for strategies to restrict VE activities through technologies have been suggested that can be potentially implemented by the Bangladesh government by coordinating with international donor agencies and CVE practitioners. The research output recommends that Bangladesh and other less developed countries can concurrently deal with CVE by successfully using cutting-edge online/digital technologies.

Purpose
With the proliferation of terrorist/extremist websites on the World Wide Web, it has become progressively more crucial to detect and analyze the content on these websites. Accordingly, the volume of previous research focused on identifying the techniques and activities of terrorist/extremist groups, as revealed by their sites on the so-called dark web, has also grown.
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents a review of the techniques used to detect and process the content of terrorist/extremist sites on the dark web. Forty of the most relevant data sources were examined, and various techniques were identified among them.
Findings
Based on this review, it was found that methods of feature selection and feature extraction can be used as topic modeling with content analysis and text clustering.
Originality/value
At the end of the review, present the current state-of-the- art and certain open issues associated with Arabic dark Web content analysis.

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) commissioned BSR to conduct a human rights assessment of its strategy, governance, and activities. The purpose of this assessment is to identify actual and potential human rights impacts (including both risks and opportunities) arising from GIFCT’s work and make recommendations for how GIFCT and its participants can address these impacts. BSR undertook this human rights review from December 2020 to May 2021. This assessment combines human rights assessment methodology based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) with consideration of the human rights principles, standards, and methodologies upon which the UNGPs were built. This review was funded by GIFCT, though BSR retained editorial control over its contents.