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Domestic terrorists pose a significant threat to the U.S., according to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Domestic terrorists often use online platforms—such as social media and gaming—to communicate radical ideas to a wide audience and mobilize likeminded people.

The FBI and DHS have some tools for sharing information with and receiving information from social media and gaming companies on threats related to domestic terrorism. But neither agency has developed strategies and goals related to such information-sharing efforts.

In recent years, radicalization is being increasingly attempted on video-sharing platforms. Previous studies have been proposed to identify online radicalization using generic social context analysis, without taking into account comprehensive viewer traits and how those can affect viewers’ perception of radicalizing content. To address the challenge, we examine QAnon, a conspiracy-based radicalizing group, and have designed a comprehensive questionnaire aiming to understand viewers’ perceptions of QAnon videos. We outline the traits of viewers that QAnon videos are the most appealing to, and identify influential factors that impact viewers’ perception of the videos.

Depuis le début de la vague d’attentats de Daech en Europe et aux États-Unis en 2015, les géants des réseaux sociaux Meta, Google et Twitter se sont investis dans la lutte contre le terrorisme sur leurs services. Cet article interroge la manière dont ces acteurs privés se sont approprié la catégorie contestée de « terrorisme », à travers une analyse de discours d’un corpus de leurs communications officielles. Celle-ci permet de montrer comment ces entreprises tentent, par diverses stratégies, d’évacuer les enjeux politiques intrinsèques à cette notion, avec un succès mitigé.

The far right is increasingly relying on visual and less extreme online communication, for instance by using memes, to strategically mainstream their ideology. The use of humor in particular renders their communication more relatable to a mainstream audience. However, little is known about the actual impacts of the different content characteristics they employ to become more appealing, in particular on less moderated platforms that function as safe online spaces for extremist ideology and contents. To fill this gap, we conducted a manual quantitative content analysis of 1,200 memes distributed within German-language far-right Telegram channels in 2020 and 2021, concentrating on humor and several content-related factors to analyze their impact on meme reach. The results demonstrate that memes with extreme far-right narratives and memes with humor received fewer views than others, but that memes with both far-right narratives and humor had a significantly increased reach. The findings highlight the mainstreaming potential of humor, particularly when used to mask extreme content that would otherwise be less appealing.