Online Library

Hateful and antagonistic content published and propagated via the World Wide Web has the potential to cause harm and suffering on an individual basis, and lead to social tension and disorder beyond cyber space. Despite new legislation aimed at prosecuting those who misuse new forms of communication to post threatening, harassing, or grossly offensive language – or cyber hate – and the fact large social media companies have committed to protecting their users from harm, it goes largely unpunished due to difficulties in policing online public spaces. To support the automatic detection of cyber hate online, specifically on Twitter, we build multiple individual models to classify cyber hate for a range of protected characteristics including race, disability and sexual orientation. We use text parsing to extract typed dependencies, which represent syntactic and grammatical relationships between words, and are shown to capture ‘othering’ language – consistently improving machine classification for different types of cyber hate beyond the use of a Bag of Words and known hateful terms. Furthermore, we build a data-driven blended model of cyber hate to improve classification where more than one protected characteristic may be attacked (e.g. race and sexual orientation), contributing to the nascent study of intersectionality in hate crime.

Hateful and antagonistic content published and propagated via the World Wide Web has the potential to cause harm and suffering on an individual basis, and lead to social tension and disorder beyond cyber space. Despite new legislation aimed at prosecuting those who misuse new forms of communication to post threatening, harassing, or grossly offensive language – or cyber hate – and the fact large social media companies have committed to protecting their users from harm, it goes largely unpunished due to difficulties in policing online public spaces. To support the automatic detection of cyber hate online, specifically on Twitter, we build multiple individual models to classify cyber hate for a range of protected characteristics including race, disability and sexual orientation. We use text parsing to extract typed dependencies, which represent syntactic and grammatical relationships between words, and are shown to capture ‘othering’ language – consistently improving machine classification for different types of cyber hate beyond the use of a Bag of Words and known hateful terms. Furthermore, we build a data-driven blended model of cyber hate to improve classification where more than one protected characteristic may be attacked (e.g. race and sexual orientation), contributing to the nascent study of intersectionality in hate crime.

Anno Bunnik explores the ramifications of Big Data for countering terrorism, extremism, and radicalisation. With the recent rise of jihadists and other extremists groups in the Middle East and Europe, how do state agencies respond through the use of Big Data? This chapter critically engages with questions such as the extent to which Big Data can inform us about and help prevent radicalisation. It deals with the role of non-governmental organisations and the private sector in this regard. Bunnik makes the argument that whilst it is inevitable that Big Data will take centre stage in counter-terrorism, its potential should also be utilised to better understand radicalisation and extremism.

Anno Bunnik explores the ramifications of Big Data for countering terrorism, extremism, and radicalisation. With the recent rise of jihadists and other extremists groups in the Middle East and Europe, how do state agencies respond through the use of Big Data? This chapter critically engages with questions such as the extent to which Big Data can inform us about and help prevent radicalisation. It deals with the role of non-governmental organisations and the private sector in this regard. Bunnik makes the argument that whilst it is inevitable that Big Data will take centre stage in counter-terrorism, its potential should also be utilised to better understand radicalisation and extremism.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

This Strategic Studies Institute book provides a comprehensive research guide to radical Islamist English-language online magazines published between April-May 2007 and November 2016, as well as Islamic State eBooks published between November 2012 and November 2015, and a number of assorted radical Islamist news magazines, reports, and pocketbooks. A comparative analysis of Inspire and Dabiq magazine issues are provided along with strategic insights related to al-Qaeda and Islamic State online magazine clusters and their differing strategic approaches as articulated in these magazines. Finally, policy response options, utilizing a targeting schema leveraging the five stages of the magazine life-cycle process: environmental motivators, production, end product, distribution, and outcomes, are discussed.