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This article maps mechanisms by which online social media activities may contribute to right-wing political violence. High-impact studies on the wave of right-wing and racist violence in the 1990s and early 2000s established that mass media discourse on immigrants and previous violent incidents had a significant influence on the prevalence of radical right violence. This link was captured by Koopmans’s and Olzak’s notion of discursive opportunities. However, this was before the dominance of online social networks and social media, which changed the media landscape radically. We argue for broadening and refining the operationalization of the concept of discursive opportunities in social movement studies as well as including in our theoretical models new mechanisms brought about by the new online media. In relation to radical right and anti-immigrant mobilizations in Sweden in the 2010s, we elaborate and exemplify three mechanisms through which activities on social media may affect the incidence of violence: a) having an increasingly co-produced discursive opportunity structure, b) making inter-group dynamics in movement groups and networks trans-local, and c) sharing (rare) practical information and co-ordinating activities.

Social media platforms have become extremely popular in the last fifteen years. Almost half of the world population has a social media account. This has made social media extremely attractive to extremist groups. Recent studies have shown that extremists use social media platforms for violent radicalisation. They take advantage of the interactional nature of these platforms to recruit and influence individuals at risk of radicalisation. Through social media interactions, individuals at risk of radicalisation develop a sense of shared identity which appears to be an important driver in the process of violent radicalisation. Although many studies have highlighted the importance of social media interactions in online radicalisation, it seems that none of these studies has analysed these interactions from an interactional perspective. This paper aims to fill this gap in violent radicalisation research. It proposes to use Conversation Analysis (CA) for the examination of interactions occurring between extremists and potential recruits on social media platforms. More importantly, this article will show the benefits of using CA for the analysis of these interactions.

The chapter addresses the question of how crisis and emergency communicators in the justice (police) and health sector in Norway reflect on their use – or lack of use – of social media during the terror crisis on 22 July 2011. We examine how these communicators in the years following the crisis have developed their use of social media to optimise their and the public’s awareness of similar crises. Our semi-structured interviews with key emergency managers and responders display how the terrorist-induced crisis in 2011 was a wake-up call for communicators in the police and the health sector. They reflect on the significance, strengths and weaknesses of social media in the management of crises such as this one. Book edited by Harald Hornmoen and Klas Backholm

The influence of social media on the spread of violent extremist narratives and online radicalisation processes has recently become a focal point for research in the fields of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism; however, most of the studies thus far have focused on Western countries and have often been aimed at analysing phenomena such as homegrown and lone wolf terrorism or the online radicalisation of foreign terrorist fighters. Far less evidence-based research has explored the influence of social media on terrorism in Africa and even less regarding Mali in particular. In this report, ICCT and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) seek to fill this gap through an analysis of survey data from youth participants in their joint on-the-ground project in Mali—“Mali (Dis-) Engagement and Re-Integration related to Terrorism” (MERIT)—to determine the implications of social media use for violent extremism in Mali.

There is an on-going debate over the role of online activities in the radicalisation process. However, much of this debate has focused on Western countries, particularly in relation to ISIL’s online influence of homegrown terrorism and of foreign fighter travel to Iraq and Syria. Less is known about patterns of online radicalisation in Africa and about the extent to which African national governmental strategies focus on addressing this issue. To address this gap in knowledge, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) commissioned RAND Europe to explore social media use and online radicalisation in Africa.

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.