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This paper reviews available research on how the internet facilitates radicalisation and measures to prevent it. It briefly canvasses evidence on the extent to which the internet contributes to radicalisation broadly, and who is most susceptible to its influence, before delving further into the mechanisms underpinning the relationship between the internet and violent extremism.

High-level approaches to combating internet-facilitated radicalisation, including content removal, account suspensions, reducing anonymity, and counternarrative and education campaigns, are mapped against these mechanisms. This illustrates how these approaches can disrupt radicalisation and assists researchers, policymakers and practitioners to identify potential gaps in existing counterterrorism and countering violent extremism regimes. Research on the implementation and outcomes of these approaches is also summarised.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

The ‘involuntary celibates’, or men who have been unable to find romantic or sexual relationships with women despite wanting to, have congregated in the online incel community. Though initially supportive in nature, the community has become a hotbed for (violent) online misogyny. My ongoing virtual ethnographic research focuses on the nature of the incel community and its members, and how the community plays a role in online misogynistic radicalization. To this end, this contribution applies Bayerl et al.’s Radicalisation-Factor Model and its four interlinked factors—the individual, the environment, the radical groups and ideology, and technologies—to the incel community. This adjusted framework find its basis in existing insights from domains such as (online) radicalization, social psychology, scholarship of gender, masculinity and misogyny, and is further inspired by ongoing non-participatory observations on incel forums. By approaching the incel phenomenon from different perspectives, this framework has the aim of providing a holistic understanding of the incel community as well as highlighting the importance of the interplay of various individual, ideological, contextual and technological features in the process of online radicalization.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Published on May 29, 2015
This video was streamed live by DMAPLab MIGS on 26 May 2015.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has become a household name because it films its atrocities and posts them online thanks to social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube.

Western countries and Arab states appear to be united and see the group as a threat to international peace and security. But what do we really know about ISIS? What should the international community do to cripple ISIS’ on the battlefield?

Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University and member at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a unique perception of the relationship between the Islamic State’s propaganda and its success as an organisation.

This report aims to contribute to our understanding of online hate in the context of the requirements of the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) for Video Sharing Platforms (VSPs) to protect the general public from incitement to hatred or violence. However, online hate is complex and it can only be fully understood by considering issues beyond the very specific focus of these regulations. Hence, we draw on recent social and computational research to consider a range of points outside VSP regulations, such as the impact, nature and dynamics of online hate. For similar reasons,
we have considered expressions of hate across a range of online spaces, including VSPs as well as other online platforms. In particular, we have closely examined how online hate is currently addressed by industry, identifying key and emerging issues in content moderation practices. Our analyses will be relevant to a range of experts and stakeholders working to address online hate, including researchers, platforms, regulators and civil society organisations.