Blog

By Vivian Gerrand The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified calls for urgent action to mitigate some of the worst harms societies are experiencing as a consequence of time spent immersed in social media environments. During the lockdowns, this immersion has gone from partial to almost total. While social media enables information to travel fast, it allows disinformation to spread ...

By Tech Against Terrorism The Digital Services Act (DSA) – announced as part of the EU Commission’s “Shaping Europe’s Digital Future” proposals in February 2020 – has recently closed its public consultation process. The purpose of the DSA is to propose clear rules on the liability for user content, framing the responsibilities of digital services ...

Welcome to Volume 7 Issue 4 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. If you have colleagues or friends who may be interested in the content of our newsletter, or any events or research carried out by VOX-Pol, please forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe via our website. Follow us on Twitter @VOX_Pol for live updates ...

VOX-Pol Coordinator, Prof. Maura Conway, will be presenting at AVERT’s (Addressing Violent Extremism and Radicalisation to Terrorism) International Speaker Series on Wednesday, 9 December, 2020. The event is hosted online and you can register at this link. The talk is titled ‘Determining the Role of the Internet in Right-wing Extremism and Terrorism: Nine Suggestions for Progressing ...

By Jordan McSwiney and Greta Jasser Gab.com is an alternative social networking platform closely associated with the so-called ‘Alt-Right’. Since its public launch in 2017, Gab has provided a safe space for all manner of online far-right communities, a significant portion of which place themselves squarely in the ‘#MAGA’ camp. Our research shows the important ...

The Journal for Deradicalization (JD) has announced that Prof. Maura Conway has joined their Editorial Board. JD is the only independent and peer reviewed online journal about processes of radicalisation and the theory and practice of deradicalisation globally.  In a tweet thanking the journal’s editor for the invitation to join the Board, Prof. Conway reaffirmed her commitment to open access academic publishing. ...

By Dimitrios Kalantzis Less than 24 hours after John Earnest opened fire at a San Diego-area synagogue killing one person and injuring three others, the focus of the developing story shifted to his digital life. News outlets reported that Earnest “posted an anti-Jewish screed online about an hour before the attack” and “praised the suspects ...

This is a response to last week’s blog post One Database To Rule Them All: The Invisible Content Cartel that Undermines the Freedom of Expression Online. [Ed.] By Tech Against Terrorism Summary Tech Against Terrorism focusses on providing practical support to the tech sector in tackling terrorist use of the internet whilst respecting human rights. ...

A response to this article can be found HERE. [Ed.] By Svea Windwehr and Jillian C York The Invisible Content Cartel that Undermines the Freedom of Expression Online Every year, millions of images, videos and posts that allegedly contain terrorist or violent extremist content are removed from social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. ...

By Ben Lee A potent combination of technology and a fractured extreme-right is producing innovative organisations that are harder to police. In April 2020 two men aged 20 and 22 were arrested after posting racist stickers in public spaces across the city of Sheffield. The stickers featured various slogans critical of the government’s handling of ...