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This article presents an original analysis of portrayals of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on websites with radical and extremist content. We analyze and discuss key online narratives about women and their societal roles from 100 sampled online articles published on ten websites that primarily propagate right-wing, nationalist and Salafist thinking. The article shows that while Salafist websites focus on didactic material about how women are expected to act (selectively using the Quran and hadiths), radical ethno-nationalist and right-wing articles directly accuse liberal-thinking women and feminists of immorality, perversity, and shameful behavior. While studied articles on Islamic websites confine women’s roles to family caretakers and to wives, selected ethno-nationalist articles present women in relation to their national belonging and war victimization. We conclude that the studied websites essentialize women’s societal functions, predominantly placing their roles and identities in the private sphere while linking womanhood to collective national and/or religious identity. Although the selected platforms represent different manifestations of extremisms, they share many similarities.

I am interested in contributing further knowledge regarding the alt-right, white supremacy, and the Internet by exploring the sinister conducting of Zoom-bombing anti-racist events. Here, I will investigate how white supremacy through the Internet can lead to violence, abuse, and fear that “transcends the virtual world to damage real, live humans beings” via Zoom-bombing, an act that is situated in a larger co-option of the Internet by the alt-right and white supremacists, but has been under theorised as a hate crime.

Policymakers have recently expressed concerns over the role of recommendation algorithms and their role in forming “filter bubbles”. This is a particularly prescient concern in the context of extremist content online; these algorithms may promote extremist content at the expense of more moderate voices. In this article, we make two contributions to this debate. Firstly, we provide a novel empirical analysis of three platforms’ recommendation systems when interacting with far-right content. We find that one platform—YouTube—does amplify extreme and fringe content, while two—Reddit and Gab—do not. Secondly, we contextualise these findings into the regulatory debate. There are currently few policy instruments for dealing with algorithmic amplification, and those that do exist largely focus on transparency. We argue that policymakers have yet to fully understand the problems inherent in “de-amplifying” legal, borderline content and argue that a co-regulatory approach may offer a route towards tackling many of these challenges.

In this report, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and CASM Technology provide a data-driven snapshot of the online activities of extremists with a demonstrable link to New Zealand, as well as the digital platforms connecting New Zealand to an international extremist ecosystem.

White Supremacist groups have been an active participant in the digital world since its inception. However, as this technology evolved so too did the opportunities it provided to various iterations of far-right political groups and organizations. Though it would be incorrect to say that the evolving realities of the digital world are the central cause for far-right radicalization, it did provide the opportunity by which those individuals already holding extremist attitudes and beliefs to better consolidate those beliefs, while also embracing a community of like-minded individuals across the country and around the world. Attitudes and beliefs, which were perhaps less welcome in normal day-to-day experience could now be shared and validated in ways that furthered this process extremism and made the possibility of violence more likely.

With this Handbook we aim to provide a comprehensive and accessible resource for tech platforms to improve their understanding of legislative developments and key trends in online regulation. All resources included in the Handbook can be accessed via our relaunched Knowledge Sharing Platform.