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VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Between 20 March and 14 September 2020, Moonshot investigated online far-right extremist searches in Bosnia & Herzegovina by analysing at-risk audience engagement with far-right extremist themes.

Our results show a significant number of searches were for far-right extremist themes relating to the region’s history of ethnic conflict, as well searches for international far-right memes and narratives. Interestingly, we found that at-risk users primarily search for and engage with far-right extremist terms in the English language, seeking out terms which have their roots in the region but are now used internationally, such as ‘Serbia Strong’ and ‘Remove Kebab’.

The Online Civil Courage Initiative’s core partner, ISD, has been tracking both positive and negative
responses to terror attacks in the UK this year, to understand how to improve counterspeech in the
UK. This report contains advice for NGOs working towards challenging hate speech and extremism
online with recommendations/suggestions for how they can respond speedily and effectively in the
aftermath of an attack, and improve understanding on the coordinated efforts (online raids) that are
designed to undermine positive speech.

The increasing complexity and emergence of Web 2.0 applications have paved way for threats arising out of the use of social networks by cyber extremists (Radical groups). Radicalization (also called cyber extremism and cyber hate propaganda) is a growing concern to the society and also of great pertinence to governments & law enforcement agencies all across the world. Further, the dynamism of these groups adds another level of complexity in the domain, as with time, one may witness a change in members of the group and hence has motivated many researchers towards this field. This proposal presents an investigative data mining approach for detecting the dynamic behavior of these radical groups in online social networks by textual analysis of the messages posted by the members of these groups along with the application of techniques used in social network analysis. Some of the preliminary results obtained through partial implementation of the approach are also discussed.

This research briefing explores if and how far-right narratives from the United States (US), France and Germany gain traction in domestic mainstream media, or move across borders between the US on the one hand, and France and Germany on the other. It tests what will be referred to as the mainstreaming hypothesis (far-right ideas start out in far-right alternative media but eventually move to the mainstream) and the transnationalisation hypothesis (far-right ideas spread between national media ecosystems).

This article presents an empirical analysis of the Australian media representation of terrorism using the 2014 Sydney Lindt Café siege as a case in point to engage with the notion of moral panic. Deploying critical discourse analysis and case study as mixed methods, insights into trans-media narratives and aftermath of the terrifying siege are presented. While news media appeared to collaborate with the Australian right-wing government in the reporting of terrorism, social media posed challenges and raised security concerns for the state. Social media heightened the drama as sites were variously deployed by the perpetrator, activists and concerned members of the public. The amplified trans-media association of Muslims with terrorism in Australia and its national and global impact, in terms of the political exclusion of Muslims, are best described in this article in the form of an Islamophobic Moral Panic Model, invented for a rethink of the various stages of its occurrence, intensification and institutionalization.