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During the 2019 Christchurch attack, the perpetrator livestreamed footage from a helmet-mounted camera. The aesthetic similarity of the attack footage to first-person shooter (FPS) videogames has led to speculation that this might have somehow ‘gamified’ the attack. Generally, the argument for this is that the attack footage (1) imitates or resembles FPS games, gamifying attacks (2) increasing the affective appeal of propaganda by presenting it as play and thereby (3) increasing the salience of these attacks within gaming communities. This article challenges these notions. It argues that the FPS genre should not be associated with such footage due to visual similarity and is better considered in relation to film. The idea that such footage was purposefully shot to look like an FPS is unsupported, and more likely the result of practical considerations. While the framework of gamification might be useful, it should rest on interactivity, rather than aesthetic similarity.

VOX-Pol Guest Lecture Series, Autumn 2023

Name: Kristina Kirk, Principal Advisor, Christchurch Call Unit, New Zealand Government

Title: The Christchurch Call

Outline: This presentation will discuss the establishment and evolution of The Christchurch Call, an initiative arising as a consequence of the livestreaming of an horrific terrorist event in New Zealand in 2019. The Call outlines collective, voluntary commitments from Governments and online service providers designed to address the issue of terrorist and violent extremist content online and to prevent the abuse of the internet as occurred during and after the Christchurch attacks.

Content takedowns have emerged as one of the central pillars in the global fight against disinformation and extremism. Despite their increasing ubiquity as disruptive tools in political processes, their true efficacy remains up for debate. We ‘know’, for example, that takedowns had a strong disruptive effect on Islamic State-supporting networks online, but we do not know whether constraining avenues for expression may ultimately accelerate offline acts of violence. We also know that extreme-right networks have weaponised content takedowns as evidence of victimisation and the steadfast erosion of ‘free speech’, often underpinning calls to (violent) action. There is much to understand about the efficacy of content moderation with regard to accelerationism, democracy and (violent) extremism: this event seeks to address these issues in an open forum for discussion.

Chair: Dr. James Fitzgerald (Dublin City University)

Presentation 1: Moderating Borderline Content whilst Respecting Fundamental Values Dr Katy Vaughan (Swansea University)

Presentation 2: Recommending Instead of Taking Down: YouTube hyper-partisan content promotion amid the 2022 Brazilian general elections Profs. Rose Marie Santini, Débora Salles, & Bruno Mattos (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

Presentation 3: Wellness and Conspiracy Theories: The promise and peril(s) of content takedowns Dr. Vivian Gerrand (Deakin University) and Dr. James Fitzgerald (Dublin City University)

This study sheds light on the emerging threat of terrorists, particularly Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations, leveraging online crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies. The recent events of October 7, 2023, highlight the pressing nature of this issue. A systematic case analysis reveals the sophisticated exploitation of digital finance for discreet resource accumulation, circumventing traditional oversight. The findings expose unidentified typologies and funding pathways, significantly bolstering terrorist resilience against interdiction efforts. This study provides vital knowledge to catalyze policy adaptations at this critical juncture by probing real-world implications that still lack coordinated responses. Ultimately, this study raises awareness about evolving asymmetries and underscores the importance of closing gaps in vigilance, necessitating academic and policy attention to inform agile, ethical countermeasures before technological vulnerabilities widen further.

This article, which combines social network analysis and open-source intelligence, discusses the functions, structure, and evolution of al-Qaeda’s (AQ) information ecosystem on the surface web in the second half of 2023. It argues that despite preferring Rocket Chat as a primary communication channel, this terrorist organisation developed an extensive and robust propaganda distribution network detectable from the surface web. The pro-AQ ecosystem on this Internet communication layer relied primarily on standalone websites, message boards, and blogs, interconnected with a broad range of file-sharing services and channels on encrypted communication apps. Aside from them, the group manifested limited activity on mainstream social media. In the second half of 2023, the group demonstrated resilience to content takedowns, as most of its key domains used to disseminate propaganda continued to be active under the same or changed URLs. This study shows that, in contrast to the Islamic State, alQaeda’s information ecosystem was largely decentralised, which was primarily caused by the differentiated approaches of its branches to maintaining their presence in this environment. The lack of centralisation of AQ’s propaganda distribution network may be considered both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, it potentially increases its resilience to content takedowns. On the other hand, however, it also demonstrates a lack of coordination between branches, which decreases their media operations’ potential efficiency and reach.

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.