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Despite the ongoing need for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to identify and assess the online activities of violent extremists prior to their engagement in violence offline, little is empirically known about their online behaviors generally or differences in their posting behaviors compared to non-violent extremists who share similar ideological beliefs particularly. In this study, we drew from a unique sample of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists to compare their posting behaviors within a sub-forum of the largest white supremacy web-forum. Analyses for the current study proceeded in three phases. First, we plotted the average posting trajectory for users in the sample, followed by an assessment of the rates at which they stayed active or went dormant in the sub-forum. We then used logistic regression to examine whether specific posting behaviors were characteristic of users’ violence status. The results highlight a number of noteworthy differences in the posting behaviors of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists, many of which may inform future risk factor frameworks used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to identify credible threats online. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this analysis, its limitations and avenues for future research.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

The development of social media technologies has had a significant impact on individuals, organizations and societies. However, social media has not only affected people and communities, but also terrorist organizations have started to use social media platforms effectively. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS ) is one such group that actively utilizes social media. Social media has played a critical role in formulating and disseminating ISIS ’s strategies. Twitter is one of the most effective social media platforms used by ISIS , and it actively uses Twitter in predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey. In this article, I use a dictionary-based method to compare and analyze 29,419 tweets from English-speaking supporters of ISIS and 40,526 tweets from Turkish supporters of ISIS between 2015 and 2016.

Homegrown Sunni extremists (jihadis) and Latin American street gang members (cholos) represent potential threats to national security. Both groups are known to inhabit the video- sharing website YouTube. Videos representative of each group were selected at random, and the visual motifs in the videos were categorized. Findings suggest similarities and differences between the two groups that may have significance for how practitioners address each threat, and for determining the likelihood that the two groups may begin to work in concert. The portraits that emerge of jihadis and cholos may assist in developing strategies to counter the violence perpetrated by each.

Social media offer unprecedented opportunities to terrorist groups to spread their message and target specific audiences for indoctrination and recruitment. In 2013 and 2014, social media, in particular Twitter, overtook Internet forums as preferred space for jihadist propaganda. This article looks into Arabic statements by Jabhat al Nusra, Islamic State and jihadist forum administrators and online activists to argue that, beside the easier use of social media and disruption and infiltration of the forums, the conflict between the jihadist groups accelerated the migration to social media and the building of a presence on Twitter that provided relative resilience to suspensions.