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Welcome to Volume 10, Issue 1 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. NEW VOX-Pol PUBLICATION: REASSURE VOX-Pol is pleased to present the latest report in the VOX-Pol publication series, titled Online Extremism and Terrorism Researchers’ Security, Safety, and Resilience: Findings from the Field, authored by Elizabeth Pearson, Joe Whittaker, Till Baaken, Sara Zeiger, Farangiz Atamuradova, and Maura Conway. Elizabeth ...

VOX-Pol is pleased to present the latest report in its publication series, titled Online Extremism and Terrorism Researchers’ Security, Safety, and Resilience: Findings from the Field and authored by Elizabeth Pearson, Joe Whittaker, Till Baaken, Sara Zeiger, Farangiz Atamuradova, and Maura Conway. The Researcher Security, Safety and Resilience project (REASSURE) launched in 2020 to document ...

Three VOX-Pol Member Institutions: Swansea University, Dublin City University, and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich will be part of a consortium to drive greater awareness of and compliance with the European Union’s new regulations to tackle terrorist content online. The new European Union rule, which came into effect last year, obliges hosting service providers offering ...

By Aaron Y. Zelin and Sarah Cahn In recent years, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has been attempting to develop its own polity. This process has not been linear and there has been a maturation process over time. Beyond governance though, an important part of nation-building is creating a similar narrative of people’s own history and ...

by Arie Perliger One of the most favorable habits of scholars of terrorism is self-reflection on their field. Numerous op-eds and articles are published every year, striving to reflect on the development and challenges in terrorism studies and assess which future topics will be the most promising and policy-relevant. Such summaries, however, usually expose some ...

by Ye Bin Won and Meghan Conroy In 2014, the Post reported on a study that found that almost 60% of Americans surveyed admitted that they did not watch, read, or hear any news stories beyond the headlines in the previous week. A few years later, the Post reported on another study that found that ...

By Andrew Whiting   First announced in January 2019, last week saw the publication of the long-awaited independent review of Prevent led by Lord Shawcross. Prevent is controversial and this review has had its own controversies.  The review’s original lead was replaced after legal challenge and the subsequent appointment of Shawcross led to a boycott ...

by Greta Jasser Incel forums are online spaces with little to no moderation against violent and harmful speech. Yet, despite the almost non-existent community guidelines, users aim to debate, break or circumvent them, as transgression and violent talk are central to the community that formed in these spaces. The term incel is a shorthand for ‘involuntarily ...

By Sean McCafferty This analysis will focus on the role of file-sharing platforms in disseminating propaganda linked to violent far-right lone-actor attacks, examining the recent Bratislava perpetrator as a case study. A pattern among a selection of attackers represents an emerging typology of behaviour within the propaganda dissemination strategies of violent extremists on the far ...

Book Review by Andrew Glazzard Terrorism is, as we know, propaganda in word and deed. Terrorists communicate symbolically (through their choice of targets, or their methods of attack) as well as directly through statements, stories and appeals. There is, therefore, no shortage of studies  addressing how terrorists exploit mass media, from the made-for-television spectaculars of ...