Online Library

Welcome to VOX-Pol’s Online Library, a research and teaching resource, which collects in one place a large volume of publications related to various aspects of violent online political extremism.

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Type	Title	Year	Author	Links
Journal	Beating ISIS in the Digitial Space: Focus Testing ISIS Defector Counter-Narrative Videos with American College Students View Abstract Beating ISIS in the Digitial Space: Focus Testing ISIS Defector Counter-Narrative Videos with American College Students ISIS recruits on a 24/7 basis in over 21 languages over the Internet using videos, memes, tweets and other social media postings and swarming in on anyone that retweets, likes or endorses their materials to try to seduce them into the group. Their unprecedented social media drive has resulted in over 30,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries migrating to Syria and Iraq. ISIS recruitment in the U.S. is for the most part Internet based and has resulted in the actual and attempted recruitment of over 100 individuals residing in the U.S. with over 200 Americans traveling to Syria to join terrorist groups. To date very little counter-narrative material exists and most of it is cognitive versus emotionally impactful. The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) Breaking the ISIS Brand – the ISIS Defectors Interviews Project has managed to collect 43 ISIS defector interviews and thus far produce two video clips of ISIS defectors denouncing the group which were focus tested in this research in a small normative college student sample of 75 undergraduate students. The results demonstrate that American college students find the videos authentic, disturbing and turn them away from ISIS, fulfilling the goals that the project is aiming for in producing counter-narrative materials. View Full Article	2017	McDowell-Smith, A., Speckhard, A., and Yayla, A.	View Publisher
Report	Becoming Mulan: Female Western Migrants to ISIS View Abstract Becoming Mulan: Female Western Migrants to ISIS The current flow of foreigners to Syria and Iraq is remarkable not only for its scale, but also for its inclusion of many women. Much has been written about the male fighters who migrate to engage in the conflict there; these fighters are prolific on social media and share details of their day-to-day experiences with supporters and opponents alike. Less, however, is known about the women who travel to join ISIS and support its state-building efforts. The flow of both men and women is a concern for Western governments, who fear that these individuals could pose a threat on return home. The number of Western migrants overall is estimated at 3,000, with as many as 550 of these being women. This report aims to provide insight into the female migrants, examining the reasons they migrate, the reality of their lives in ISIS-controlled territory, and the potential risk they pose. While there is a large online ecosystem of female ISIS supporters, this study will focus specifically on Western women who are believed to be currently residing in ISIS-controlled territory. View Full Article	2015	Boyle, C., Bradford, A., Frenett, R.	View Publisher
Journal Article	Behind Blue Skies: A Multimodal Automated Content Analysis of Islamic Extremist Propaganda on Instagram View Abstract Behind Blue Skies: A Multimodal Automated Content Analysis of Islamic Extremist Propaganda on Instagram Social media platforms, such as Instagram, are regularly misused for spreading covert (Islamic) extremist propaganda. Affect and emotion are central tools used in extremist propaganda, but there is little research into the combined employment of different social media elements, such as hashtags, visuals, and texts, in the context of propaganda. This study contributes to closing this gap. Using the German group Generation Islam as a case study, we examined the group’s Instagram activity (N = 1,187 posts) over the course of 2 years. To reflect the platform users’ logic, we (a) examined affect in hashtag networks in which users can come across propagandistic content, (b) employed deep learning to examine the emotional valence transmitted in the visuals, and (c) used automated linguistic analysis to describe collective action cues contained within the texts. The results are novel, as they provide nuanced insights into extremist propaganda’s employment of affect and emotions across Instagram’s affordances. View Full Article	2023	Clever, L., Schatto-Eckrodt, T., Clever, N.C. and Frischlich, L.	View Publisher
VOX-Pol Blog	Being one step ahead: How platforms (can) counter terrorism online View Abstract Being one step ahead: How platforms (can) counter terrorism online VOX-Pol Blog post. View Full Article	2025	Selzer, F.	View Publisher
Chapter	Belonging is just a click away: Extremism, radicalisation, and the role of online communities View Abstract Belonging is just a click away: Extremism, radicalisation, and the role of online communities As the field of terrorism studies evolves, there continues to be increasing interest in how the Internet and social media platforms are impacting extremist groups, militant movements, and individual radicalisation to violence. Especially with the rise of the Islamic State, and the migration of tens of thousands of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq, there was urgent academic and policy concern about how ISIS’s glossy magazines, high-definition videos, and social media presence were contributing to this sudden spike in jihadist mobilisation around the world (Rudner, 2017; Barrett, 2017; Dawson & Amarasingam, 2017). Policy discussions soon followed, with substantial resources going into countering violent extremism (CVE) strategies (Vidino & Hughes, 2015; Berger & Perez, 2016; Winter et al., 2020; Clifford et al., 2020). Focus was also placed on deplatforming extremist content as well as new initiatives by social media companies to work together to ensure that their platforms were not exploited for harmful purposes (Amarasingam, 2021; GIFCT, 2017; Meleagrou-Hitchens & Kaderbhai, 2017). Other researchers looked more closely at the nexus between radicalisation and online extremist content (Koehler, 2014; Hassan et al., 2018; Odag et al., 2019) and how online networks are formed and developed among extremists (Ferrara, 2017; Veilleux-Lepage & Archambault, 2019; Caiani & Wagemann, 2009). This rush to research, though, has produced staggered results: some regions have been ignored, and propaganda in languages other than Arabic and English remains understudied. For instance, based on a rudimentary Google Scholar search, there are over 50 articles on Dabiq and Rumiyah, the Islamic State’s English-language online magazine. Commendable work thus far has analysed visual strategies (Abdelrahim, 2019), the portrayal of particular countries in these magazines (Stempien, 2019), images of children (Kaczkowski, 2019), and calls to violence (Lakomy, 2019), among a host of other topics. Similarly, there have been numerous studies examining extremist online support networks as well as the impacts of deplatforming on these networks (Berger & Perez, 2016; Amarasingam et al., 2021; Pearson, 2018; Chandrasekharan et al., 2017; Conway et al., 2021; Alexander, 2017). What remains relatively understudied, however, is the importance of community for individuals who are radicalising in the online space. This is an area of research that is beginning to receive further attention and is coming to be seen as an important area that warrants further investigation. While numerous articles mention ‘online community’ or ‘virtual community’ in passing, there are only a handful of studies truly unpacking the concept or exploring its significance in the field. There are also different terminologies used in publications attempting to capture the phenomenon: online ecology (Conway et al., 2021), radical milieu (Conway, 2012), collective identity (Futrell & Simi, 2004), as well as cyberculture (Simi & Futrell, 2006). View Full Article	2023	Amarasingam, A.	View Publisher
Lecture	Benjamin Ducol Le « jihad 2 0 » Discours, Mythes et Réalités View Abstract Benjamin Ducol Le « jihad 2 0 » Discours, Mythes et Réalités Titre complet : Le « jihad 2.0 » ? : Discours, mythes et réalité(s) autour du rôle des espaces numériques dans les trajectoires jihadistes contemporaines. View Full Article	2015	Ducol, B.	View Publisher

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