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VOX-Pol Blog Post.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

VOX-Pol’s new report presents findings from the REASSURE (Researcher, Security, Safety, and Resilience) project’s in-depth interviews with 39 online extremism and terrorism researchers. Based at universities, research institutes, and think tanks in Europe and North America, the interviewees studied mainly, albeit not exclusively, far-right and violent jihadist online activity. The report catalogues for the first time the range of harms they have experienced, the lack of formalised systems of care or training, and their reliance therefore on informal support networks to mitigate those harms.

Much qualitative research has drawn an association between social media and domestic terrorism, with the studies reaching different conclusions. However, few empirical studies have evaluated whether the surge in social media participation affects domestic terrorist events. Controlling for common explanations in the literature, we conduct a cross-national, time-series analysis of up to 151 countries from 2000 to 2019 to assess the impact of social media penetration on domestic terrorism. We find that greater social media penetration increases the likelihood of domestic terrorism in countries as it supports extremists’ ability to recruit, mobilize, and train terrorists. Using mediation analysis, we also find that greater social media penetration amplifies online and political polarization, increasing the likelihood of domestic terrorism events. Our work indicates the possible mechanisms linking social media and domestic terrorism and the need to develop and apply appropriate counterterrorism strategies to mitigate terrorist operations.

Due to recent rises in extremism across the globe (Dean et al. in J Polic Intell Count Terror 11:121–142, 2016; Le Roux in Responding to the rise in violent extremism in the Sahel. Africa Center For Strategic Studies, 2019, p. 26) and (Jones in Int Secur 32:7–40, 2008), governments and law enforcement organisations, such as the police, have looked to new strategies to counter violent extremism (Russell and Theodosiou in Counter-extremism: a decade on from 7/7. Quilliam Foundation, 2015). Specifically, there has been an expanse of the field now widely known as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). CVE is a highly contested area; however, upon conducting a literature review, Inserra (Revisiting efforts to counter violent extremism: leadership needed. The Heritage Foundation, 2015, p. 2) helpfully reduced the term CVE down to descriptions of interventions intended to “stop individuals from radicalizing”. LaFree and Freilich (Annu Rev Criminol 2:383–404, 2019) distinguish counter-terrorism from CVE, they describe counter-terrorism as military responses (‘hard’) as opposed to non-military responses (‘soft’), referred to as countering violent extremism strategies. This chapter contends that, although counter narratives tend to lack academic standing, there does appear to be a widespread acceptance that narratives influence individuals’ beliefs. Therefore, in the absence of other more effective methods of CVE online, it is argued that counter-narratives (CN) should be used in informed ways by organisations such as the police (Monaghan in Crime Media Cult 18(1):21–39, 2020). This chapter will compare academic understandings of narrative and communication alongside examples of counter narratives issued against them. It will then assess the impact of such strategies and potential alternatives for CN.