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Social media platforms have become a prominent feature in modern-day communication, allowing users to express opinion and communicate with friends and likeminded individuals. However, with this revolutionary form of communication comes risks of exploitation and utilisation of these platforms for potentially illegal and harmful means. This article aims to explore the community guidelines and policies of prominent social media sites regarding extremist material, comparing the platform’s policies with the user experiences. To measure social media user experience and user exposure to extremist material, this article pilots the use of a new scale: The Online Extremism Exposure Scale (OECE), which measures both the user’s exposure to extremist communication and hate speech online. Users reported varied levels of exposure to both hate speech and extremist communication, with. the results indicating that users in the sample are being exposed to extremist material approximately 48.44% of the time they spend on social media daily. The results of this pilot study highlight potential failings by prominent social media platforms in their efforts to reduce users being exposed to extremist material. Limitations, future research, and implications are discussed in detail.

Combatting violent extremism can involve organizing Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
preventing violent extremism (PVE) programs and social media campaigns. While
hundreds of PVE campaigns have been launched around the world in recent
months and years, very few of these campaigns have actually been reviewed,
analyzed, or assessed in any systematic way. Metrics of success and failure have
yet to be fully developed, and very little is publically known as to what might
differentiate a great and successful P2P campaign from a mediocre one. This
article will provide first-hand insight on orchestrating a publically funded,
university-based, online, peer-to-peer PVE campaign – 60 Days of PVE – based
on the experience of a group of Canadian graduate students. The article provides
an account of the group’s approach to PVE. It highlights the entirety of the
group’s campaign, from theory and conceptualization to branding, media strategy,
and evaluation, and describes the campaign’s core objectives and implementation.
The article also analyzes the campaign’s digital footprint and reach using data
gleamed from social media. Finally, the article discusses the challenges and
difficulties the group faced in running their campaign, lessons that are pertinent
for others contemplating a similar endeavour.

The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of propaganda. Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly extreme social and political positions, nihilism, and violence that have emerged within the alt-right. The article concludes by applying the lessons of the alt-right for online organizing across the political spectrum and argues that a class-based politics of the left is an important part of countering the rise of the alt-right.

We conduct an ethnographic content analysis to examine the social interaction and racial identity constructed through the exchange of white supremacist humor shared on three Stormfront discussion subforums. Overall, white supremacist joke sharing functioned multidimensionally as it simultaneously fostered cohesion and contention among users. By mocking political correctness and non-Whites through the circulation of humorous images and text, white supremacists establish a communal atmosphere and produce a sense of solidarity among members in a more “fun” way than conventional speeches or publications. At the same time, joke sharing may serve as a source of contention when users exchange jokes that violate collective identity norms, such as sharing “blonde jokes” that disparage White females. These findings underscore the ongoing necessity among members of the white supremacist movement to negotiate different ideological tenets. By attending to the social function of white supremacist joke sharing, insights derived from this investigation move beyond more formal social movement events such as marches and demonstrations by attending to the daily activities that white supremacists utilize to resist external threats.

Why do young Muslim women radicalize and undertake high-risk political behaviors, and what factors influence their sociopolitical transformation? The process of radicalization happens because of individual, social, and political dynamics, and is facilitated by the availability of computer-mediated communication. Some young Muslim women keep detailed records of their radicalization process via social media, which we use to understand their sociopolitical transformation. By evaluating their language, we can better understand how their personal, social, and political development unfolds. This paper is a case study examining the words of one young Muslim woman, Aqsa Mahmood, who moved from her home in Scotland to join the ISIS fighters in Syria. Her Tumblr blog provides a linguistic, political, and ideological record of the process of her radicalization. We identify linguistic patterns in her blog posts that can help to develop and reveal a typology of the language of female radicalization.

VOX-Pol Blog post.