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Popular tech companies—Google, Facebook,
Twitter, and others—have strongly protected
free speech online, a policy widely associated
with the legal norms of the United States.
American tech companies, however, operate
globally, and their platforms are subject to regulation
by the European Union, whose member states offer less
protection to expression than does the United States.
European regulators are pressuring tech companies to
control and suppress extreme speech. The regulators’
clear warning is that, if the companies do not comply
“voluntarily,” they will face harsher laws and potential
liability. This regulatory effort runs the risk of censorship
creep, whereby a wide array of protected speech, including
political criticism and newsworthy content, may end up
being removed from online platforms on a global scale.

Online platforms are used extensively as a propaganda
tool to convince young people to support the
various groups fighting in Iraq and Syria. Many individuals
outside of the conflict partake in propaganda
efforts on social media, using their profiles to provide
electronic support to ISIS and other extremist
groups. An analysis of various profiles indicates that
those engaged in the Syria conflict use their profile
to disseminate information about the conflict, which
can be used for propaganda. The typical feature observed
across these profiles is the virtual association
between them.

The 8th Euromed Survey conducted by the European Institute of the Mediterranean touches
upon a number of important and complex issues related to violent extremism in the EuroMediterranean
region, including the question of the context and drivers through which violent
extremism can prosper. Echoing some of the results, this article looks into propaganda as a
tool of extremist ideologies and how to counter it.

This article’s objective is to categorize potential jihadists in Europe and provide an overview of contemporary methods for their recruitment. Taking into account the ubiquity of the Internet and social networking platforms, and the fact that younger generations are spending an ever increasing amount of time using contemporary communication technology, this article focuses on those recruitment methods that make use of social networking platforms and mobile applications for the spread of extremist propaganda, as well as for communication with potential adherents. An analysis of the age structure of individuals involved in the planning and carrying out of terrorist acts in Europe from November of 2015 to September of 2017 supports a hypothesis that contemporary recruitment methods are especially effective in targeting a younger demographic. In addition, this article negates the importance of traditional physical exposure to radical behavior, which serves to explain the increasing number of terrorist attacks in Europe conducted by radicalized citizens of European countries.

Steganography is the art and science of
hiding the fact that communication is taking place by
hiding information in other information’ (Johnson).
According to nameless “U.S. officials and experts”
and “U.S. and foreign officials,” terrorist groups
are “hiding maps and photographs of terrorist
targets and posting instructions for terrorist
activities on sports chat rooms, pornographic
bulletin boards and other Web sites”. This paper
informs the reader how an innocent looking digital
image hides a deadly terrorist plan, which can
destroy the world just in a click of a mouse. It also
describes and discusses the process of secret
communication known as steganography. The
crucial argument here is that terrorists are most
likely to be employing digital steganography to
facilitate secret intra-group communication as has
been claimed. This is mainly because the use of
digital steganography by terrorist is both technically
and operationally dubious. The most important part
this paper discusses is that terrorist are likely to
employ low-tech steganography such as semagrams
and null chippers instead. It investigates the
strengths of image steganography and the reasons
why terrorists are relying on it so much.

Governments and companies are turning to automated tools to make sense of what people
post on social media, for everything ranging from hate speech detection to law enforcement
investigations. Policymakers routinely call for social media companies to identify and take
down hate speech, terrorist propaganda, harassment, “fake news” or disinformation, and
other forms of problematic speech. Other policy proposals have focused on mining social
media to inform law enforcement and immigration decisions. But these proposals wrongly
assume that automated technology can accomplish on a large scale the kind of nuanced
analysis that humans can accomplish on a small scale.