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VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

The development of the Internet and social media has exploded in the last couple of years. Digital environments such as social media and discussion forums provide an effective method of communication and are used by various groups in our societies.  For example, violent extremist groups use social media platforms for recruiting, training, and communicating with their followers, supporters, and donors. Analyzing social media is an important task for law enforcement agencies in order to detect activity and individuals that might pose a threat towards the security of the society.

In this thesis, a set of different technologies that can be used to analyze digital environments from a security perspective are presented. Due to the nature of the problems that are studied, the research is interdisciplinary, and knowledge from terrorism research, psychology, and computer science are required. The research is divided into three different themes. Each theme summarizes the research that has been done in a specific area. The first theme focuses on analyzing digital environments and phenomena. The theme consists of three different studies. The first study is about the possibilities to detect propaganda from the Islamic State on Twitter.  The second study focuses on identifying references to a narrative containing xenophobic and conspiratorial stereotypes in alternative immigration critic media. In the third study, we have defined a set of linguistic features that we view as markers of a radicalization.

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.

Research surrounding radicalization to and use of violence among extremist and terror groups has expanded over the last decade. There are still fundamental questions that must be addressed, particularly regarding the role of the Internet in radicalisation and recruitment as well as general technological skill within extremist groups. Few studies have considered this issue, especially among Far Right groups which have been identified as one of the top threats to public safety within the United States. This exploratory study addresses these issues using a qualitative analysis of a sample of threads from a technology-specific subforum of a widely used web forum in the white nationalist and white power movement. The findings demonstrate that the process of information sharing is distinct from that of more sophisticated deviant and criminal communities on-line, as users readily answer basic technological questions rather than discuss offensive attack techniques. The implications of this study for future research are examined in depth.

VOX-Pol Blog post.