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This Research Paper sheds light on the experience of the pioneering Saudi–based independent online counter– radicalization campaign called ‘Sakinah’ (Tranquillity), launched in 2003. Relying on multiple interviews and discussions with the founder and head of the campaign the writer of this Research Note was granted exclusive access to early archived campaign materials and records of dialogues with terrorists and radicals. This Research Note is able to highlight the history and methodology of the campaign’s work, the shifted motivations of radicals over time, and the importance of such initiatives and efforts. It also shows how, as a result of the changing nature and environment in which radicals operate, the campaign innovated its strategies and moved from a defensive counter-narrative engagement towards more offensive, proactive messaging aimed at eliciting specific reactions and taking control of the narrative and debate.

The current National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin released by the Department of Homeland Security places the United States in a heightened threat environment due to “threat actors” becoming mobilized by “personal grievances, reactions to current events, and adherence to violent extremist ideologies…” (Summary of the Terrorism Threat to the United States, 2022). Online threats, extremism, and radicalization – particularly through video game platforms and applications – are an increasing threat. There is growing concern that connectivity provided by gaming can provide fertile ground for a range of potentially criminal activity and radicalization. Extremist organizations are leveraging the “gamification” of extremism to both radicalize new individuals and virtually bringing already radicalized individuals together, leading to an increased spread of extremist ideology worldwide. The gamification of extremism poses clear national security threats for both the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community (IC), particularly in terms of its counterintelligence implications. In order to address this concern, the DoD and IC can develop policies for moderating gaming and gaming app platforms for federal employees and service members, optimize the security clearance process to account for online gaming relationships, and modify current counterintelligence and cybersecurity training for federal employees and service members, and developing psychological interventions for individuals become radicalized.

How transnational are the audiences of far right parties and movements on Twitter? While an increasing number of contributions addresses the topic of transnationalism in far right politics, few systematic investigations exist on the actors and discourses favored in transnational exchanges on social media. Building on the literature on the far right, social movements, transnationalism and the Internet, the paper addresses this gap by studying the initiators and the issues that are favored in online exchanges between audiences of far right organizations, e.g. political parties and movements across France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. We use a new dataset on the activities of far right Twitter users that is analyzed through a mixed methods approach. Using social network analysis, we detect transnational links between far right organizations across countries based on retweets from audiences of far right Twitter users. Retweets are qualitatively coded for content and compared to the content retweeted within national communities. Finally, using a logistic regression, we quantify the level to which specific issues and organizations enjoy high levels of attention across borders. Subsequently, we use discourse analysis to qualitatively reconstruct the interpretative frames accompanying these patterns. We find that although social media are often ascribed much power in favoring transnational exchanges between far right organizations, there is little evidence of this. Only a few issues (anti-immigration and nativist interpretations of the economy) garner transnational far right audiences on Twitter. In addition, we find that more than movements, political parties play a prominent role in the construction of a transnational far right discourse.

Feminist journalists have come to expect special resistance, and even threats, from men’s groups as part of their work as journalists. However, the biggest threats might not originate in men’s groups’ activities. A big threat currently comes from Internet trolls’ responses to individuals who engage in hate‐provoked and hate‐provoking attacks on women as women. This is exemplified in the case of Anders Behring Breivik, who blew up government buildings in Oslo in 2011 and murdered youth from the Labour Party at Utøya as part of his explicitly articulated xenophobic and misogynist campaign against the Islamification of Norway. His ideas are still being shared in social media responses to this tragedy across Nordic countries. This paper argues that this demonstrates that the harms to women and to society go well beyond the individual victims of an identifiable incident. Largely because of their role in condemning and rejecting the hateful ideas advanced across social media forums, troll responses to the Breivik tragedy constitute a particular threat to female and especially feminist journalists.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.