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VOX-Pol Blog Post.

The increased threat of right-wing extremist violence necessitates a better understanding of online extremism. Radical message boards, small-scale social media platforms, and other internet fringes have been reported to fuel hatred. The current paper examines data from the right-wing forum Stormfront between 2001 and 2015. We specifically aim to understand the development of user activity and the use of extremist language. Various time-series models depict posting frequency and the prevalence and intensity of extremist language. Individual user analyses examine whether some super users dominate the forum. The results suggest that structural break models capture the forum evolution better than stationary or linear change models. We observed an increase of forum engagement followed by a decrease towards the end of the time range. However, the proportion of extremist language on the forum increased in a step-wise matter until the early summer of 2011, followed by a decrease. This temporal development suggests that forum rhetoric did not necessarily become more extreme over time. Individual user analysis revealed that super forum users accounted for the vast majority of posts and of extremist language. These users differed from normal users in their evolution of forum engagement.

This report highlights the networks, supporters, and the platforms of Islamic State disinformation disseminators, focusing on popular social media platforms as well as encrypted messaging applications. These disinformation networks are creating self-branded media outlets with followers in the tens of thousands, and often with innocuous names like “Global Happenings,” “DRIL” and “Media Center,” to evade moderation and takedowns. These same networks use coded language and a codebook of emojis to spread Islamic State “news” to other networks of supporters, who similarly evade moderation. These ‘alternative news outlets’ are trying to outcompete narratives publicized by government officials as well as independent mainstream media and individual journalists – groups that were also heavily targeted by Islamic State.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

This study researches the varying threats that emanate from terrorists who carry their activity into the online arena. It examines several elements of this threat. First, it explores elements of virtual to virtual attacks. Second, it looks at threats against critical infrastructures that can be traced to online sources. Third, this thesis reports on ways that terrorists are using information technology such as the Internet for propaganda and communication purposes. Finally, it highlights the most crucial ways in which the United States government has responded to the problem. It concludes with a few recommendations for best practices for future engagement with varying aspects of cyberterrorism.