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The first aim for the GIFCT Academic and Practical Research Working Group (APRWG) Sub-Group 1 was to produce a written assessment of the key barriers to research and knowledge transfer, along with opportunities and models for addressing them. The six GIFCT Working Groups – Academic and Practical Research; Content-Sharing Algorithms, Processes, and Positive Interventions; Crisis Response; Legal Frameworks; Technical Approaches; and Transparency – depend on reliable research and practice. As a result, the APRWG inhabits the unique position of identifying research needs that may ostensibly impact these working groups at a foundational level. This paper aims to assess the knowledge gaps and barriers that affect multiple stakeholders within the field of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) to begin moving towards holistic, coordinated solutions.

In setting out the work program for the past 12 months, the group’s shared objective was to collaborate across industry, government, and civil society “to map content-sharing algorithms and processes used by industry that may facilitate consumption of content that may increase user interest in or amplify terrorist and violent extremist content and consider positive interventions and risk mitigation points.” This report focuses on the first part of that objective: To map content-sharing algorithms and processes used by industry. The potential role of content-sharing algorithms in radicalization and violent extremist recruitment continues to be an issue of focus. Yet there is little understanding about what those algorithms are and how they might be misused, contribute to radicalization, or be exploited by violent extremist groups and bad actors. This document is the first step in contributing to that understanding.

In setting out the work program for the past 12 months, the shared objective of the group was to collaborate across industry, government, and civil society “to map contentsharing algorithms and processes used by industry that may facilitate consumption of content that may increase user interest in or amplify terrorist and violent extremist content and consider positive interventions and risk mitigation points.” This report focuses on the second part of the objective in considering positive interventions and risk mitigation points. GIFCT’s mission is focused on preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. For the purposes of this work we have taken a content-agnostic approach and sought to map positive interventions already used in the countering violent extremism (CVE) space as well as those that have been used elsewhere but could be applied to CVE. The use of counter and alternative narratives is recognized as an online CVE mechanism for connecting users to alternative sources of information. Yet there is less awareness of the uses of other forms of positive interventions.

The third edition of Europol’s annual report on Online Jihadist Propaganda provides a comprehensive analysis of the major trends and developments in online propaganda of the most prominent jihadist organisations for the year 2020.

This case study applies aspects of third space theory (; ) to investigate the activism on the YouTube channel Salafimedia UK (smuk) and their claim to be the self-proscribed “truest” and “purest” Islamic sect. This chapter introduces the somewhat paradoxical concept of “hybridic purity” – an emerging ideology that seeks to encompass pre-modern Islamic practices of the salaf (“predecessors” or first generations of Muslims) as the purest form of Islam (see also ); modern values of individuality and reliance on the “self”; the affordances of the YouTube channel; and resistance to present-day Western cultural and political values, especially those of the United Kingdom (UK), as well as to the UK government’s censorship and bans of Salafist movements. This hybridic purity becomes authoritative as it compels YouTube audience members to take responsibility for their own growth and activism as pious Salafists.

Online radical Islam is a topic widely studied by scholars and notoriously discussed among non- experts as well (; ; ). Because of its intrinsic characteristics (i.e. accessibility, anonymity, or users’ identity dissimulation), the internet has always been a useful tool for propagandists of Islamic fundamentalism (; ; ). However, in the last decade, studies have questioned the real importance and magnitude of Islamic radicalization online (). In fact, while scholars were focused on observing digital Islamic radicalization, a galaxy of new forms of extremism was growing online (; ) that no longer made Islam an exceptional case study. Today, Muslim people are one of the groups most aggressively targeted by extremist, intolerant, violent, and radical discourses (; Amnesty International, ). Anti-Muslim hate speech has spread online throughout Europe and the United States, reinforced by the propaganda and political discourse of populist right-wing parties (; ). This paper introduces some large-scale action-research projects developed in Europe and Italy in the last three years (2016–2019) and aims to reconstruct the most updated Islamophobia state of the art in terms of numbers, characteristics, and phenomenology from the offline to the online context.