Online Library

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in far-right inspired attacks. In this context, the present article offers an analytical framework for the study of right-wing extremists’ multifaceted and fast-growing activity on the Internet. Specifically, we conceptualize the far-right online presence as a dynamic ecosystem, teasing out four major components that correspond to the different levels of analysis available to future research. We illustrate the benefits of this framework with key illustrative examples from the English-, French-, and German- speaking far-right, revealing the worrying size and breadth – but also heterogeneity – of today’s far-right online ecosystem.

Online forums such as 4chan and 8chan have grown in notoriety following a number of high-profile attacks conducted in 2019 by right-wing extremists who used their “/pol” boards (dedicated to “politically incorrect” discussions). Despite growing academic interest in these online spaces, little is still known about them; in particular, their similarities and differences remain to be teased out, and their respective roles in fostering a certain farright subculture need to be specified. This article therefore directly compares the content and discussion pace of six different /pol boards of “chan” forums, including some that exist solely on the dark web. We find that while these boards constitute together a particular subculture, differences in terms of both rate of traffic and content demonstrate the fragmentation of this subculture. Specifically, we show that the different /pol boards can be grouped
into a three-tiered architecture based upon both at once how popular they are and how extreme their content is.

This paper combines qualitative and quantitative content analysis to map and analyze the “Incel” worldview shared by members of a misogynistic online community ideologically linked to several recent acts of politically motivated violence, including Alek Minassian’s van attack in Toronto (2018) and Elliot Rodger’s school shooting in Isla Vista (2014). Specifically, the paper analyses how support and motivation for violence results from the particular structure this worldview presents in terms of social categories and causal narratives.

This book offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the Islamic State’s use of propaganda. Combining a range of different theoretical perspectives from across the social sciences, and using rigorous methods, the authors trace the origins of the Islamic State’s message, laying bare the strategic logic guiding its evolution, examining each of its multi-media components, and showing how these elements work together to radicalize audiences’ worldviews. This volume highlights the challenges that this sort of “full-spectrum propaganda” raises for counter terrorism forces. It is not only a one-stop resource for any analyst of IS and Salafi-jihadism, but also a rich contribution to the study of text and visual propaganda, radicalization and political violence, and international security.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Over the past decade, two major phenomena have developed in the digital realm. On the one hand, extremism has grown massively on the Internet, with sprawling online ecosystems hosting a wide range of radical subcultures and communities associated with both ‘stochastic terrorism’ and the ‘mainstreaming of extremism’. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone exponential improvement: from ChatGPT to video deepfakes, from autonomous vehicles to face-recognition CCTV systems, an array of AI technologies has abruptly entered our everyday lives. This report examines ‘AI extremism’, the toxic encounter of these two evolutions – each worrying in its own right. Like past technological progress, AI will indeed be – in fact already is – used in various ways to bolster extremist agendas. Identifying the many opportunities for action that come with a range of AI models, and linking them with different types of extremist actors, we offer a clear overview of the numerous facets of AI extremism. Building on the nascent academic and government literature on the issue as well as on our own empirical and theoretical work, we provide new typologies and concepts to help us organize our understanding of AI extremism, systematically chart its instantiations, and highlight thinking points for stakeholders in countering violent extremism.