Online Library

This paper examines the need and possibility for developing online resilience-based approaches in response to COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies, often linked to the far right. Examining three datasets collected between December 2020 and April 2021, this paper details conspiracy narratives that have developed around COVID-19 vaccines, with specific focus on understanding the deployment of the idea of a planned pandemic or so-called ‘#plandemic’. This is then used to consider where existing resilience-based approaches to countering off-line polarisation and extremism might posit an appropriate online response. The article identifies four key #plandemic framings of COVID-19 vaccines — as control, as reset, as unnecessary and as unsafe — and analyses how these themes are constructed, to find that they are often created through hostile and confrontational interaction with other users. Based on these findings, the conclusion suggests companies shift their focus away from ‘negative’ approaches to content moderation (e.g., content removal) and towards resilience-building responses that cultivate flexible individual identities, build community support networks, and/or engage users with national and supranational democratic structures, as a more effective response to the sharing of online conspiracies.

The rise of QAnon presents researchers with a number of important questions. While emerging literature provides insights into how QAnon exists online, there is a dearth of theoretical engagement with the questions of why it exists, and what conditions brought it into being. This paper seeks to address this gap by contextualizing QAnon as an ontological phenomenon underpinned by anxiety, and inquiring into the identity formation strategies employed by the movement. Applying the basic precepts of discourse theory and discourse analysis to a representative canon of QAnon content, it finds that, like other formations of collective identity, QAnon is premised on interconnected dynamics of ontological fulfillment that cannot be explained away by pointing to ‘the algorithm’ or ‘madness’. Nor can it be tackled effectively by the content takedowns and de-platforming strategies currently employed. The paper concludes with a call to explore more empathetic engagement with conspiracy adherents, arguing that until we (re)discover a more inclusive, agonistic politics, QAnon and other fantastical conspiracy movements will continue to arise and some may metastasize into violent action. New forms of resilience to (online) polarization can be built on this principle.

This article offers a descriptive analysis of intelligence operations carried out by the United States and its allies against the presence of jihadist groups on the Internet during the period 2001–2020. In contrast to actions aimed at eliminating the virtual spaces in which terrorists operate, the intelligence operations analysed here are designed to erode terrorists’ trust in such spaces without compromising intelligence sources. The article argues that the combination of cyberattacks and psychological operations in the form of honeypots and sabotage have achieved considerable success in terms of reducing terrorist activities on the Internet and undermining the effectiveness of propaganda initiatives undertaken by terrorist groups.

This article contributes to the growing field of social media and internet research, focusing on questions of securitization and examining the internet politics of Central Asia with a specific focus on Turkmenistan. The article extends the brief analysis introduced by Tucker and Turaeva (2016) concerning Turkmen nationals joining IS (Islamic State). Here, I have contextualized those reported discussions into a wider geopolitical and sociological positioning of the participants (both individual and states) with the aim of uncovering the methods and principles that state and non-state actors use to construct discourses of threat and danger on social media and elsewhere on the internet. I argue that social media and the internet have moved beyond being a means for open communication and exchange; they have also come to be used by authoritarian states to suppress, control, and manipulate certain discourses. In the case of Turkmenistan, social media helps to control security discourse about the ISIS threat and the presence of Turkmenistani nationals in the group, even as it grants open access to information.

Over time cyberspace has become an increasingly relevant environment for Islamic terrorism. The advent of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) in 2014 showed capability in exploiting jihadist propaganda and terror communication to radicalize and mobilize sympathizers globally. The digital arena has assumed a central role in the online jihadist movement. This centrality manifested itself in establishing an increasingly active Digital Caliphate declined in a community shape. The community’s members migrated on different digital platforms, consolidating mainly on Telegram between 2017 and the end of 2019 when the extremist digital community was hardly hit by a counterterrorism operation led by Europol. However, how was the Digital Caliphate organized on Telegram? Was there any leadership within this community? Who were the main actors’ part of it? How did the trust-building process work amongst strangers but close to the same extremist ideology? Furthermore, what were the expressive, communicative and symbolic features of the online jihadist culture? By applying digital ethnography through the covert participant observation lasting about two years within the pro-IS digital community on Telegram, this study seeks to provide an insight into the social, cultural and organizational anatomy of the Digital Caliphate and its members by identifying a possible organizational model. Extensive reflection was also dedicated to the ethical dimension; thus, the potentiality emerged from applying the ethnographic approach when considered a counterterrorism tool called “Digital Humint”. The “Think Terrorist” approach, a process that immerses the researcher within the extremist perspective, is not limited to being an academic exercise but becomes an analysis tool that helps identify future threats. Interpreting the jihadist ecosystems and the role of technology increases our understanding and provides new insights for future prevention strategies. That is the challenge that poses academics and law enforcement agencies as increasingly converging actors in fighting against terrorism.

This study analysed three social media movements linked with extreme right‑wing activities online. Such activities were carried out by right‑wing extremists and those who support their philosophy of nationalism and religious conservatism, whether actively or passively. This study also investigated how themes and narratives from across the globe, such as US political discourse, Russian disinformation and conspiracy theories, are combined with real‑life local grievances in order to appeal to similarly aligned followers to help to disseminate and legitimise reactionary speech.