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The Alt-Right is a neo-fascist white supremacist movement that is involved in violent extremism and shows signs of engagement in extensive disinformation campaigns. Using social media data mining, this study develops a deeper understanding of such targeted disinformation campaigns and the ways they spread. It also adds to the available literature on the endogenous and exogenous influences within the US far right, as well as motivating factors that drive disinformation campaigns, such as geopolitical strategy. This study is to be taken as a preliminary analysis to indicate future methods and follow-on research that will help develop an integrated approach to understanding the strategies and associations of the modern fascist movement.

Mobilization is central to the emergence, survival and success of armed groups challenging the state, and has lately expanded to new arenas with the rise of social media. Using a new dataset of rebel group Twitter use, we examined the topics contained in rebel group social media communications to understand how different messaging strategies impact civilian engagement with rebel messages. Rather than benefiting solely from direct calls to action, we found that rebel groups also increased civilian engagement through indirect messages of self-promotion. While direct appeals received more engagement than indirect appeals, their effects were tempered by audience fatigue when relied on too heavily. We additionally found that including images further enhanced the impact of a mobilizing message. These findings expanded our understanding of rebel communications and mobilization, with important implications for combating the use of social media as a recruitment tool for violent extremism.

Some moderation strategies of online content have targeted the individuals believed to be the most influential in the diffusion of such material, while others have focused on censorship of the content itself. Few approaches consider these two aspects simultaneously. The present study addresses this gap by showing how a socio-semantic network analysis can help identify individuals and subgroups who are strategically positioned in radical networks and whose comments encourage the use of violence. It also made it possible to identify the individuals and subgroups who act as intermediaries and whose statements are often the most violent.

Drawing on Tilly’s notion of “repertoire of action,” this article shows how the evolution of the global jihadist movement’s communicative action repertoire has increased the potential resonance of its discourse. It foresees the construction of the global jihadist movement’s discourse of mobilization as the result of the evolution of its network of actors, the context in which its communications are undertaken, and its adaptation to new communication technologies. Accordingly, it argues that the decentralization of the global jihadist movement has led to a widening of its communicative action repertoire and a diversification of its discourse offering.

This article presents the results of a study which measured the web presence of terrorist groups active in Sub Saharan Africa. It also explores the relationship between web technology availability and adoption by terrorist groups and looks at how differentiating between web publishing technologies used by terrorist groups can further develop the study of terrorist cultures and communities online.

The deeply engrained nature of social media in modern life have provided ease of access to information and speed of use within almost every aspect of a person’s life. These same benefit are also available to terrorists and their organizations. The same technology that allows for a globalized world to interact without regard for distance or physical location is also utilized, exploited and adapted to by terrorist organizations to conduct operations, reach candidates and ensure organizational longevity.

This article takes the position of observer of these advancements with the end goal of informing counter-violent extremism strategists of the advances that terrorist groups have already made in digital technology; and where the priority of intervention strategies should be aimed. Further, this is intended to guide policy makers to embrace and utilize digital technologies as a mechanism to carry counter-radicalization and counter-violent extremism interventions through the same digital potential and reach the same audiences as terrorist organizations. What appears strongly apparent is that social media will not abate from its intrinsic position graphed into daily life. This means that counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization and counter-violent extremism strategies must take up the same technology in order to effectively discredit and nullify extremist groups – a digital problem needs a digital solution.