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The 2023 Supreme Court case Twitter v. Taamneh found that defendant social media companies were not liable for aiding and abetting a terrorist attack overseas. The Court alluded to the existence of an alternative set of facts that might alter their analysis or produce a different outcome. This Comment explores those “other contexts” and seeks to identify what factors could produce a successful Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) aiding and abetting claim against a social media company for an act of terrorism overseas. This is difficult, in part, because the framework for aiding and abetting liability provided in JASTA is seemingly incompatible with the operations of social media companies. To better evaluate how JASTA’s framework should apply to social media companies, both JASTA cases that do not involve social media companies and aiding and abetting cases derived from other sources are analyzed for their relevance to the social media context.

Ultimately, this Comment concludes that it would take an extraordinary set of facts to find social media companies secondarily liable for an act of terrorism. This is, in part, due to the nature of how social media operates and continues to progress at a rapid pace. The increasing role that social media plays in society highlights why deterring further Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) use of social media is critical; as avenues to recruitment and international planning increase, the risk to the United States’ national security also increases. Given that JASTA is not a solution, this Comment suggests other avenues to encourage social media companies to heighten their detection of FTO activity and prevent future attacks.

This chapter examines Europol’s Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) and its role in the privatized governance of online media within the broader context of transnational law enforcement and European counter-terrorism policy. Established in 2015, the EU IRU monitors online content and recommends takedowns to hosting platforms based on breaches of terms of service, not legal violations. By analyzing the discursive practices of the EU IRU, this chapter seeks to understand the (in)security dynamics of online radicalization and assess associated human rights concerns. The core question addressed is how Europol frames radicalization and Internet content. The chapter situates the EU IRU within the wider discourse on counter-radicalization, arguing for a deeper understanding of radicalization as perceived by professionals in the field. A detailed policy analysis highlights the unit’s referral and takedown activities, scrutinizing Europol’s framing of technology as a security issue and radicalization as a problem exacerbated by online communication. The study reveals significant issues such as over-blocking, lack of due process, and absence of recourse for affected users, emphasizing the ethical and human rights implications of private companies acting as arbiters of speech. The conclusion critiques Europol’s approach, noting its inconsistency and inefficacy, and underscores the necessity of transparent and judicially overseen content regulation. This chapter calls for a re-evaluation of current counter-radicalization strategies, advocating for more holistic approaches that balance security needs with fundamental rights and democratic accountability.

Method

Results

Radicalization is a global event affecting different countries and present in different historical contexts. Psychiatrists can help in the analysis of radicalization in individuals who operate autonomously from more radicalized groups. These lone actors or lone wolves are more difficult to spot as there is no unique identification because they operate as self-determined women or men. A focus of the current study is on the radicalization of children and women. The use of ethnographic research also using Internet sources has provided satisfactory results in the analysis of radicalization while reducing the risk and difficulties of approaching a sample population (terrorists, lone wolves, and radical groups) that, most of the time, is remote, dangerous and concealed to public scrutiny. Emphasis is also provided to the stages of development of radicalized thought and how radicalization can be understood in terms of cognitive and social development of the lone-wolf terrorist. The authors also explore how a radicalized leader can lever on the vulnerability of some individuals to radicalize them. Besides, the authors approach radicalized thought also as a logical fallacy and as a sign of dualistic thinking. Hence, a mix of cognitive, logical, and psychiatric triggers is analyzed in their potential to radicalize.

Drawing from interviews with 39 online extremism and terrorism researchers, this article provides an empirical analysis of these researchers’ experiences with institutional ethics processes. Discussed are the harms that these researchers face in the course of their work, including trolling, doxing, and mental and emotional trauma arising from exposure to terrorist content, which highlight the need for an emphasis on researcher welfare. We find that researcher welfare is a neglected aspect of ethics review processes however, with most interviewees not required to gain ethics approval for their research resulting in very little attention to researcher welfare issues. Interviewees were frustrated with ethics processes, indicating that committees oftentimes lacked the requisite knowledge to make informed ethical decisions. Highlighted by interviewees too was a concern that greater emphasis on researcher welfare could result in blockages to their ‘risky’ research, creating a ‘Catch 22’: interviewees would like more emphasis on their (and colleagues’) welfare and provision of concomitant supports, but feel that increased oversight would make gaining ethics approval for their research more difficult, or even impossible. We offer suggestions for breaking the impasse, including more interactions between ethics committees and researchers; development of tailored guidelines; and more case studies reflecting on ethics processes.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict started on 7 October 2023, have resulted thus far to over 48,000 people killed including more than 17,000 children with a majority from Gaza, more than 30,000 people injured, over 10,000 missing, and over 1 million people displaced, fleeing conflict zones. The infrastructure damage includes the 87\% of housing units, 80\% of public buildings and 60\% of cropland 17 out of 36 hospitals, 68\% of road networks and 87\% of school buildings damaged. This conflict has as well launched an online discussion across various social media platforms. Telegram was no exception due to its encrypted communication and highly involved audience. The current study will cover an analysis of the related discussion in relation to different participants of the conflict and sentiment represented in those discussion. To this end, we prepared a dataset of 125K messages shared on channels in Telegram spanning from 23 October 2025 until today. Additionally, we apply the same analysis in two publicly available datasets from Twitter containing 2001 tweets and from Reddit containing 2M opinions. We apply a volume analysis across the three datasets, entity extraction and then proceed to BERT topic analysis in order to extract common themes or topics. Next, we apply sentiment analysis to analyze the emotional tone of the discussions. Our findings hint at polarized narratives as the hallmark of how political factions and outsiders mold public opinion. We also analyze the sentiment-topic prevalence relationship, detailing the trends that may show manipulation and attempts of propaganda by the involved parties. This will give a better understanding of the online discourse on the Israel-Palestine conflict and contribute to the knowledge on the dynamics of social media communication during geopolitical crises.