Online Library

Realizing that after the COVID-19 pandemic learner and faculty engagement is even more critical to learning—as evidenced by ongoing declines in post-pandemic post-secondary enrollment—this paper presents a series of reflections and experiences from the perspective of a student and faculty member. These experiences are understood through an autoethnography, resulting in the creation of a feedback framework fostering community in online environments. Through self-study, critical reflection of educational theory with practice, and lived experiences, both the student and faculty member describe the formative steps leading to the adaptive creation and implementation of community in the online learning setting. The pandemic, coupled with an intentional shift to a new learning management system (LMS), underscored the criticality of adaptations in teaching and learning. The resulting framework is a model for emphasizing the connection between technology, community, and appreciative andragogy.

Does the URL referral structure of websites lead users into ‘rabbit holes’ of unreliable content? Past work suggests algorithmic recommender systems on sites like YouTube lead users to view more unreliable content. However, websites without algorithmic recommender systems have financial and political motivations to influence the movement of users, potentially creating browsing rabbit holes. We address this gap using browser telemetry that captures referrals to a large sample of domains rated as reliable or unreliable information sources. Our results suggest the incentives for unreliable sites to retain and monetise users create rabbit holes. After landing on an unreliable site, users are very likely to be referred to another page on the site. Further, unreliable sites are better at retaining users than reliable sites. We find less support for political motivations. While reliable and unreliable sites are largely disconnected from one another, the probability of traveling from one unreliable site to another is relatively low. Our findings indicate the need for additional focus on site-level incentives to shape traffic moving through their sites.

This thesis explores how extremism manages to survive in moderated online spaces. This work follows the attempts of the Instagram platform to minimize the presence of the right-wing extremist groups, specifically the Boogaloo movement, as a means of understanding how such groups survive and proselytize in the face of censorship. Addressing this question is done through the use of a multi-sited virtual ethnography spanning the Instagram Boogaloo community, Telegram channels and other external links shared by the accounts within the sample group over the course of two years. Publicly available posts from relevant accounts were archived and subject to content analysis to provide a baseline understanding of the group’s ideology and determine existing and emergent themes in order to demonstrate the evolution of the group. Collection and analysis was a concurrent and cyclical process which yielded a deeper understanding of the Boogaloo movement’s ideology and the meaning behind the symbols employed by the group. Furthermore, the results of this work showcase that the longer the Boogaloo movement spent circumnavigating censorship, the more the group began to resemble other successful extremist groups. Subsequently the analysis was informed by social movement theory and new institutionalism to explain how extremist groups approach adversity and uncertainty in a similar fashion to how institutions behave, which ultimately leads to homogenization.

Tech platforms have been through several regulatory phases concerning the countering of terrorist content on their platforms: from a lack of regulation, to the government demands of self-regulation, to the present day where regulation has been implemented across the world. Much of this regulation, however, has been heavily criticised. After consideration of these criticisms, and research into regulatory approaches in a range of other industries, this article proposes a responsive regulatory approach to countering online terrorist content. Responsive regulation argues that regulation should be responsive to specific industry structure because different structures are conducive to different degrees and forms of regulation. This article categorizes tech platforms based on different compliance issues: awareness and expertise; capacity; and willingness. It then proposes four regulatory tracks in response, in order to try to mitigate the occurrence of these compliance issues.

This report provides a review of the research on the exploitation of gaming and gaming‑adjacent platforms by violent extremists and the policies seeking to mitigate the impact of that exploitation. There is increasing interest in the nexus of online gaming and (violent) extremism. This report builds on the work of the Extremism and Gaming Research Network (EGRN) to provide a primer for those new to this space and an updated state of play of the cutting‑edge research taking place among members of the network and beyond.