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VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

The research series Hate Speech and Radicalisation on the Internet provides interdisciplinary insights into the current developments of extremist activities on the internet. With the aid of expert contributions from all over Germany, the psychological, political, anthropological and technological aspects of online hate speech and radicalisation will be considered and recommendations will be made for political leaders, social media platforms as well as NGOs and activists.

In opdracht van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum (WODC) van het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie (VenJ) heeft Coosto een verkennende studie uitgevoerd naar mogelijke nieuwe social media toepassingen voor VenJ. Deze studie beoogt primair nieuwe toepassingen in kaart te brengen of bestaande toepassingen te herformuleren zodat ze bruikbaar zijn voor VenJ. Het daadwerkelijk ontwikkelen / bouwen van nieuwe toepassingen behoort niet tot deze opdracht.

This study tracked, recorded and coded the content recommended to 10 experimental or ‘sockpuppet’ accounts on 10 blank smartphones, 5 on YouTube Shorts and 5 on TikTok. On each platform, we set up 5 types of accounts: one 16-year old boy and one 18-year old boy who sought out content typically associated with gender-normative young men (e.g. gym content, sports, video games), one 16-year old boy and one 18-year old boy who actively sought out content associated with the manosphere (e.g. Andrew Tate, anti-feminist), and one blank control account that did not deliberately seek out or engage with any particular content. The purpose of this research was to simulate and explore the digital reality of boys and young men using TikTok and YouTube Shorts, who are most likely to be targeted by the manosphere.

Recent terrorist attacks by first- and second-generation immigrants in the United States and Europe indicate that radicalization may result from the failure of ethnic integration—or the rise of intergroup prejudice in communities where “home-grown” extremists are raised. Yet, these community-level drivers are notoriously difficult to study because public opinion surveys provide biased measures of both prejudice and radicalization. We examine the relationship between anti-Muslim and pro-ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) Internet searches in 3099 U.S. counties between 2014 and 2016 using instrumental variable models that control for various community-level factors associated with radicalization. We find that anti-Muslim searches are strongly associated with pro-ISIS searches—particularly in communities with high levels of poverty and ethnic homogeneity. Although more research is needed to verify the causal nature of this relationship, this finding suggests that minority groups may be more susceptible to radicalization if they experience discrimination in settings where they are isolated and therefore highly visible—or in communities where they compete with majority groups for limited financial resources. We evaluate the validity of our findings using several other data sources and discuss the implications of our findings for the study of terrorism and intergroup relations, as well as immigration and counterterrorism policies.