Online Library

The present paper represents an exploratory, dynamic and qualitative application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for modelling the development of Islamist terror cells in the West. Two well‐known case studies are systematically re‐examined using this methodology as a supporting framework for interpreting the sequence of group development from a social psychological perspective. By drawing attention to salient features of evolving network structures, insight is gained into group functioning and underlying social–psychological mechanisms of radicalisation. This article represents a starting point for giving greater methodological and theoretical recognition to the dynamic structural properties of Islamist terrorist groups in the West. It is intended to stimulate discussion and ideas for future, more rigorous research.

Radical right influencers routinely use social media to spread highly divisive, disruptive and anti-democratic messages. Assessing and countering the challenge that such content poses is crucial for ensuring that online spaces remain open, safe and accessible. Previous work has paid little attention to understanding factors associated with radical right content that goes viral. We investigate this issue with a new dataset (ROT) which provides insight into the content, engagement and followership of a set of 35 radical right influencers. It includes over 50,000 original entries and over 40 million retweets, quotes, replies and mentions. We use a multilevel model to measure engagement with tweets, which are nested in each influencer. We show that it is crucial to account for the influencer-level structure, and find evidence of the importance of both influencer- and content-level factors, including the number of followers each influencer has, the type of content (original posts, quotes and replies), the length and toxicity of content, and whether influencers request retweets. We make ROT available for other researchers to use.

“Never before in history have terrorists had such easy access to the minds and eyeballs of
millions,” declared one journalistic account of the Islamic State’s propaganda machine and
proficient use of Twitter, Facebook, bots, and other modern means of getting its message out.
Such views that the group’s “mastery of modern digital tools” has transformed terrorism
are commonplace and, though usually presented breathlessly, contain some basic truths.1
Successful terrorist groups are good communicators and they employ the technology of
their times. Fighting terrorism today thus requires fighting terrorism on the Internet and
otherwise countering the use of advanced communications technologies. President Trump
himself stressed this in a tweet after a 2017 terrorist attack in London: “Loser terrorists must
be dealt with in a much tougher manner. The internet is their main recruitment tool which
we must cut off & use better!”2 Terrorists are only one dangerous actor on the Internet—and
the one this paper focuses on—but other dangers ranging from hostile state intelligence
services to criminal groups are also lurking. The above journalist’s quote could also apply to
Russian disinformation, sophisticated criminal phishing attempts, and other malicious uses
of the Internet.
This paper proceeds as follows. First, it examines some of the ways in which terrorist groups
use the Internet, focusing on the Islamic State in particular, and the limits and problems
they have had. Second, it looks at several of the historical problems the US government
has had in stopping this use and at the general issues that are likely to plague future efforts
regarding terrorist use of new technologies. Finally, the paper details some of the parameters
of an Intelligence Reserve Corps, describing its benefits and its limits.

An introductory note of the Journal ‘Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflicts’

The paper describes a recently-created Twitter corpus of about 6,000 tweets, annotated for hate speech against immigrants, and developed to be a reference dataset for an automatic system of hate speech monitoring. The annotation scheme was therefore specifically designed to account for the multiplicity of factors that can contribute to the definition of a hate speech notion, and to offer a broader tagset capable of better representing all those factors, which may increase, or rather mitigate, the impact of the message. This resulted in a scheme that includes, besides hate speech, the following categories: aggressiveness, offensiveness, irony, stereotype, and (on an experimental basis) intensity. The paper hereby presented namely focuses on how this annotation scheme was designed and applied to the corpus. In particular, also comparing the annotation produced by CrowdFlower contributors and by expert annotators, we make some remarks about the value of the novel resource as gold standard, which stems from a preliminary qualitative analysis of the annotated data and on future corpus development.

This report represents the interim findings of a two-year study designed to increase understanding of the social media footprint of right-wing extremism (RWE) in Canada. This work is part of a larger project designed to understand RWE in Canada led by Ontario Tech University (OTU), in partnership with Michigan State University and the University of New Brunswick. This team are currently working on a similar project designed to map offline RWE in Canada. The project follows a similar study delivered in 2015, enabling researchers and policymakers to understand how RWE has changed in the past five years.