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This Element presents original research into how young people interact with violent extremist material, including terrorist propaganda, when online. It explores a series of emotional and behavioural responses that challenge assumptions that terror or trauma are the primary emotional responses to these online environments. It situates young people’s emotional responses within a social framework, revealing them to have a relatively sophisticated relationship with violent extremism on social media that challenges simplistic concerns about processes of radicalisation. The Element draws on four years of research, including quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups with young people, and presents a unique perspective drawn from young people’s experiences.

Terrorist and extremist movements have long exploited mass communications technology in pursuit of their political ends. The advent of the internet offers new opportunities. In response, state counter-measures seek to stem the impact of extreme ideologies by a number of tactics. “Positive” measures refer to those online initiatives that seek to make an impact through digital engagement and education and the provision of counter-narratives. “Negative” measures describe those approaches that advocate for, or result in, the deletion or restriction of violent extremist online content and/or the legal sanctioning of its online purveyors or users. More sanctions-based outcomes arise through discretionary state activity such as warnings and counselling of vulnerable individuals, or through disruptive counter-measures such as bans on the giving of lectures or prohibitions on the entry into the country of speakers or the taking down of extremist internet sites. Other measures step over into criminal justice, as when individuals are prosecuted for collecting materials or information (including typically information downloaded from the internet) or for issuing messages which can be construed as direct or indirect incitements to terrorism. This paper will analyse the responses to extremist uses of the internet, with an emphasis upon legal responses – “online laws”.

This book explores the social forces among and between online aggressors that affect the expression and perpetration of online hate. Its chapters illustrate how patterns of interactive social behavior reinforce, magnify, or modify this expression. It also considers the characteristics of social media that facilitate social interactions that promote hate and facilitate relationships among haters. Bringing together a range of international experts and covering an array of themes, including woman abuse, antisemitism, pornography, radicalization, and extreme political youth movements, this book examines the specific social factors and processes that facilitate these forms of hate and proposes new approaches for explaining them.

Cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, and authoritative, this book will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and scholars of media, communication, and computational social science alike, as well as those engaged with hate crime, hate speech, social media, and online social networks.

Several alternative social media platforms have emerged in response to perceptions that mainstream platforms are censoring traditional conservative ideologies. However, many of these alternative social media platforms have evolved to be outlets for hate speech and violent extremism. This study examines hate-based channels on Telegram from a US perspective. While Telegram has often been studied in relation to ISIS, less is known about its usage by US extremist users and movements. The authors used OSINT and observational methods on a sample of 125 Telegram channels containing hate speech and violent extremist content from far-right and far-left perspectives. The authors hypothesized that there would be a greater and growing presence of far-right activity compared to farleft activity due to current migration trends away from mainstream social media by the far-right. The authors also sought to observe the presence of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and accelerationism on Telegram. This study had four major findings: (1) the findings supported the hypothesis that more channels were host to farright dialogues, yet there were several far-left channels present, (2) 64.8% of the channels grew in size over a oneweek period, (3) 47 of the 125 channels were connected to well-known violent extremist movements or hate groups, and (4) QAnon and the COVID-19 pandemic were the most prominent sources of disinformation and conspiracy theories on Telegram. The findings of this study highlight that alternative social media platforms are a growing environment for a range of hateful ideologies and are aiding the spread of disinformation campaigns. This study concludes with a discussion on future strategies to combat the influence of the Internet on radicalization outcomes.

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