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VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

In response to the rise of various fringe movements in recent years, from anti-vaxxers to QAnon, there has been increased public and scholarly attention to misinformation and conspiracy theories and the online communities that produce them. However, efforts at understanding the radicalisation process largely focus on those who go on to commit violent crimes. This article draws on three waves of research exploring the experiences of individuals currently or formerly involved in fringe communities, including the different stages of investment they progressed through, and ultimately, what made people leave. We propose a pathway model for understanding contemporary online radicalisation, including potential interventions that could be safely made at each stage. Insight into the experience of being immersed in these communities is essential for engaging with these people empathetically, and therefore preventing both the emergence of violent terrorists and protecting vulnerable people from being drawn into these communities.

This report describes and discusses developments in the violent extremist and terrorist online scene(s) in the 12-month period from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023. It accomplishes this by surveying, synopsising, and integrating the findings of relevant articles and reports produced by academics, think-tanks, civil society, and governmental organisations; high quality press reports; and the first-hand online experience and primary research of the authors.

The report is divided into four major parts: Part I focuses on the online aftermath of Hamas’ massive marauding terrorist attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023; Part II on online Jihadism, particularly that linked to al-Qaeda and the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (hereafter IS); Part III focuses on the online activities of the extreme right, particularly its European and US variants; and Part IV details the responses of a range of legislators and Internet companies to online extremist and terrorist activity over the course of the last 12 months.

We conclude by pointing to a five issues in the violent extremism and terrorism online realm(s) that bear watching in 2024.

Over the past decade, two major phenomena have developed in the digital realm. On the one hand, extremism has grown massively on the Internet, with sprawling online ecosystems hosting a wide range of radical subcultures and communities associated with both ‘stochastic terrorism’ and the ‘mainstreaming of extremism’. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone exponential improvement: from ChatGPT to video deepfakes, from autonomous vehicles to face-recognition CCTV systems, an array of AI technologies has abruptly entered our everyday lives. This report examines ‘AI extremism’, the toxic encounter of these two evolutions – each worrying in its own right. Like past technological progress, AI will indeed be – in fact already is – used in various ways to bolster extremist agendas. Identifying the many opportunities for action that come with a range of AI models, and linking them with different types of extremist actors, we offer a clear overview of the numerous facets of AI extremism. Building on the nascent academic and government literature on the issue as well as on our own empirical and theoretical work, we provide new typologies and concepts to help us organize our understanding of AI extremism, systematically chart its instantiations, and highlight thinking points for stakeholders in countering violent extremism.

VOX-Pol Blog post.