Online Library

Online radical Islam is a topic widely studied by scholars and notoriously discussed among non- experts as well (; ; ). Because of its intrinsic characteristics (i.e. accessibility, anonymity, or users’ identity dissimulation), the internet has always been a useful tool for propagandists of Islamic fundamentalism (; ; ). However, in the last decade, studies have questioned the real importance and magnitude of Islamic radicalization online (). In fact, while scholars were focused on observing digital Islamic radicalization, a galaxy of new forms of extremism was growing online (; ) that no longer made Islam an exceptional case study. Today, Muslim people are one of the groups most aggressively targeted by extremist, intolerant, violent, and radical discourses (; Amnesty International, ). Anti-Muslim hate speech has spread online throughout Europe and the United States, reinforced by the propaganda and political discourse of populist right-wing parties (; ). This paper introduces some large-scale action-research projects developed in Europe and Italy in the last three years (2016–2019) and aims to reconstruct the most updated Islamophobia state of the art in terms of numbers, characteristics, and phenomenology from the offline to the online context.

This article discusses the role of giant social media corporations Facebook, Google (YouTube), and Twitter in counter-terrorism and countering violent extremisms (CT/CVEs). Based on a qualitative investigation mobilizing corporate communications as well as a collection of interviews with European stakeholders, it argues that these firms have become actors in this policy area of what is traditionally considered high politics, through their fundamental role in establishing and enforcing the nascent global governance regime on terrorist communications. Since the emergence of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the studied firms have displayed agency and creativity in their appropriation of this new responsibility, effectively going beyond what was legally required of them. After contextualizing and questioning their involvement, motivated by terrorist exploitation of their services, reputational pressure and the threat of legislation, the article provides an analysis of the firms’ self-regulated commitment to CT/CVE through policymaking, content moderation, human resources, and private multilateralism.

With large social media platforms coming under increasing pressure to deplatform far-right users, the Alternative Technology movement (Alt-Tech) emerged as a new digital support infrastructure for the far right. We conduct a qualitative analysis of the prominent Alt-Tech platform Gab, a social networking service primarily modelled on Twitter, to assess the far-right virtual community on the platform. We find Gab’s technological affordances – including its lack of content moderation, culture of anonymity, microblogging architecture and funding model – have fostered an ideologically eclectic far-right community united by fears of persecution at the hands of ‘Big Tech’. We argue that this points to the emergence of a novel techno-social victimology as an axis of far-right virtual community, wherein shared experiences or fears of being deplatformed facilitate a coalescing of assorted far-right tendencies online.

September 11th was a turning point in the understanding of terrorism and radicalization. The Internet has provided an instrumental change regarding how terrorists communicate and spread their propaganda, proving a cause of concern for counterterrorism units. The increased use of social networking platforms has provided a significant change in the process of self-radicalization, with younger generations at greater risk. The aim of the project was to study the relationship between social media and self-radicalization among college and university students. A sample of 499 participants was recruited throughout Amazon Mechanical Turk and social media platforms. Measures on emotional intelligence, psychological involvement on social media, attitudes toward terrorism, and political violence, and loneliness were gathered. Results showed that individuals holding a university degree—especially young men—were more at risk of endorzing positive attitudes toward political violence and terrorism, and, therefore, more at risk of being radicalized.

In response to calls for more empirical studies in organizational communication to further develop the Four Flows Model of CCO, this analysis examines Daesh’s use of visual messaging strategies as a means of institutional positioning in the global communications environment. To do so, the study analyzes over 2000 religious and state images displayed in the group’s English/Arabic publications. The findings highlight the critical role of both the quantity and nature of visual output in the Four Flows Model. The study also expands current understandings of institutional positioning over time, through organizational expansion/constraint, and in relation to various targeted online communities.

As we seek to broaden and diversify our membership, and as the nature of terrorist and violent extremist activity online evolves, GIFCT must focus on developing rights-based technical solutions that are thoughtful, practical, and scalable. In our view, hash-sharing is an innovative and important first step in GIFCT’s efforts to share information among member companies and thereby promote more effective content moderation. But hashsharing is only one piece of the puzzle. When it comes to technical solutions and industry collaboration to address terrorist and violent extremist exploitation of the internet, much more remains to be done. GIFCT looks forward to working with our diverse stakeholder community to advance this collaborative effort in service of a safer and more open internet
and world.