Online Library

Far-right extremists use the internet to recruit and connect with other radicalised individuals and spread their propaganda online, with them being prolific users of online forums and social media. Such online data can be analysed using linguistic tools to identify markers of radicalisation in social media, forum posts, and other extremist texts. Few studies have examined how language and sentiment online evolves in extremist forums, which provides insight into how radicalisation into extremism unfolds overtime. To address this gap, we examine how the extremist language used by Australian members of the online far-right forum Iron March changed in relation to the level of engagement on the forum, as well as assessing whether any relationship existed between online extremist sentiment and offline violence. Forum data were computationally coded and analysed using the Grievance Dictionary, which is designed to identify psycholinguistic indicators of extremism. Results indicate that while extremist language changes over time, there was no support for the suggestion that greater forum engagement results in higher levels of extremist sentiment. The results found that a high level of online extremist sentiment is associated with offline violence. Findings are linked to existing literature, and limitations in the study design are acknowledged.

This project by GNET looks at the user journeys of individuals who enter and participate in the online spaces of extremist communities. A user journey here refers to the distinct path a user may follow to reach their goals when accessing and using an online space belonging to extremist communities.

User journeys are particularly important in offering insights into the rationale and motivations of users on the one hand, and to the inner workings of extremist online communities on the other. This is vital for understanding their goals and objectives.

In selecting the ideologies for this project, we drew upon extremist communities – rather than extremist and terrorist organisations or groups – including those actors that participate in the extremist milieu and share ideas but do not necessarily operate in concert. These ideologies include those of formal and well‐defined extremist organisations of White supremacist and anti‐government extremist groups in the United States, supporter networks of Islamic State (IS), and looser communities of extremist actors, including accelerationists, incels and chan site members who operate on shared platforms, congregating around common beliefs without the connection of formal membership.

This project is a response to the growing interest in understanding how individuals enter and participate in online spaces of extremist communities. A core goal of the project was to understand the role of algorithms in leading users to extremist communities, including the changes in algorithmic recommendations that lead users to more extreme content online. However, examining these changes proved impossible due to the precautions taken by the expert contributors to the project, such as the use of separate technology and VPNs throughout their research.

The project also highlights the distinct posting behaviour and operational security protocols of different groups, usually along ideological lines.

Societal crises, such as COVID-19, produce societal instability and create a fertile ground for radicalization. Extremists exploit such crises by distributing disinformation to amplify uncertainty and distrust. Based on these developments, this study presents a longitudinal analysis across three different non-violent extremist ideologies in the UK (Islamist, far right and eco-radicals). As part of the study, public social media channels Twitter/X, Facebook, and Telegram) of Britain First, 5 Pillars, and Earth First! were analyzed using a computational language classifier of over 36,000 posts between 2016 and 2021. The increasing prevalence of conspiracy narratives, as well as violent, hateful, and threatening language among the corpus indicates that radicalization dynamics were present and heightened, pre-, during, and post-Pandemic.

Psychological theories of mobilization tend to focus on explaining people’s motivations for action, rather than mobilization (“activation”) processes. To investigate the online behaviors associated with mobilization, we compared the online communications data of 26 people who subsequently mobilized to right-wing extremist action and 48 people who held similar extremist views but did not mobilize (N = 119,473 social media posts). In a three-part analysis, involving content analysis (Part 1), topic modeling (Part 2), and machine learning (Part 3), we showed that communicating ideological or hateful content was not related to mobilization, but rather mobilization was positively related to talking about violent action, operational planning, and logistics. Our findings imply that to explain mobilization to extremist action, rather than the motivations for action, theories of collective action should extend beyond how individuals express grievances and anger, to how they equip themselves with the “know-how” and capability to act.

Social media and terrorist financing (SMTF) refers to how terror organisations (TO), sometimes called violent extremist organisations (VEOs), have exploited free social media platforms to raise money for terrorism/fighting/jihad, to recruit, train, equip, and transport fighters, to support extremist religious proto-states (e.g., Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]), to market/brand an organisation including to disseminate its ideologies, and/or to amass wealth. This chapter considers the scope of SMTF and legal/policy responses to its ever-evolving practices, discusses how it is practised and by whom, and considers the challenges of fighting SMTF. SMTF is part of the larger concept of cyberterrorism where terrorists target computer systems maliciously and use digital technology to facilitate terror attacks, though some argue that these two actions are completely different phenomena. The chapter concludes by summarising the key points of the discussion, offering suggestions for future study of this phenomenon, and reflecting on the societal impacts of SMTF.

It has become a familiar observation that social media usage can afford material assistance to the advancement of violent extremist or terrorist causes and can be a tool for counter-extremism and counter-terrorism efforts. This chapter discusses how several core supporting pillars of extremism mesh with social media in apparently similar ways to non-extremist activity and then considers the limited available literature on non-extremist online fundraising, moving thereafter to the literature which is more focused specifically on the study of social media funding for extremist or terrorist causes. It highlights the potential role of symbolic representation of shared values on social media and how this can help to address the challenges of an era where large-scale but ostensibly non-extremist movements such as QAnon and Stop the Steal arguably share some values in common with extremist causes and hence are a potential funding reservoir not necessarily observed if one focuses on specific extremist messaging content or extremist symbology.