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Misinformation, as a tool that accelerates pathways of radicalization, requires an urgent response from both scholars and practitioners in education. In this chapter, we first examine a model of radicalization—the Educational Displacement and Replacement Model—to spotlight the distinct role that misinformation plays in enabling educationally displaced youth to embrace narratives of hate. By offering contemporary examples of misinforming narratives coupled with an illustration of the “scaling up” of a student’s personal grievances to associated (collective) grievances, we argue that misinformation serves as a form of building relationality among prospective “recruits” who face Educational Displacement. With this perspective of the connective role played by misinformation in linking the youth to movements fueled by narratives of hate, we conclude with evidence-based forms of pedagogic approaches, one of which is co-designed by the authors, to prevent radicalization via misinformation.

Despite the efforts of the United States and its allies to fight the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the group remains a formidable danger. It holds territory in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, and Syria and directs cells in Bangladesh, Egypt, France, the North Caucasus, and Yemen. ISIS operatives have conducted terrorist attacks in Europe—including one in November 2015 in Paris that killed 130 people—and lone wolves inspired by its propaganda have committed violence throughout the West. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, like that of former President Barack Obama, has publicly committed itself to defeating ISIS using conventional military means. This approach has its benefits, but it ignores a significant part of the threat posed by ISIS. The group is strong not only on the battlefield but also in cyberspace, where it uses sophisticated techniques to communicate with sympathizers, spread propaganda, and recruit new members all around the world. As one ISIS defector told The Washington Post in 2015, “The media people are more important than the soldiers.”

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die Überschneidungen in der Rechtsaußenszene auf Twitter zu ermitteln und insbesondere festzustellen, inwieweit verschiedene Gruppen in der Szene tatsächlich auf die gleiche Weise über dieselben Themen sprechen, trotz offensichtlicher Unterschiede im Tonfall und den zugrunde liegenden Ideologien. Wir verwenden einen Mischmethodenansatz: Zunächst wollen wir einen oberflächlichen Einblick in die extrem rechte Szene auf Twitter in ganz Europa gewinnen, und dann führen wir bei drei ausgewählten Gruppen in Deutschland eine detaillierte Frame-Analyse aus, um die impliziten und expliziten Überschneidungen zwischen ihnen zu bestimmen und so die quantitativen Angaben zu ergänzen, damit die Bedeutung detailliert analysiert werden kann.

VOX-Pol Blog post.