Blog

By Ahmad Helmi Bin Mohamad Hasbi and Remy Mahzam Synopsis Given their transaction anonymity and user-friendliness, cryptocurrencies appeal to extremist groups as they offer a viable alternative to the mainstream financial system and fiat money which are perceived as ‘kafir’ (infidel) currencies. The threat of cyber-driven terrorist financing is expected to grow. Commentary Bitcoins and ...

By Linda Schlegel & Till Baaken In recent years, radicalisation, its causes and facilitating conditions as well as possible counter-strategies have been widely discussed within the academic community, among practitioners, and by politicians. Today, there are a variety of radicalisation models available in order to facilitate our understanding of this phenomenon and the empirical evidence is progressively ...

  On Monday October 15, DCU School of Communications held a research and industry symposium titled ‘Media and Politics in a Polarised World‘. The event featured a full day of of discussions from leading academics and experts from the political and media industries. See the full schedule below:               ...

Our VOX-Pol colleagues, Jonathan Bright and Bharath Ganesh (Oxford Internet Institute), have issued a Call for Papers for Special Issue Responses to Online Extremism. The intent of this special issue is to ‘map and evaluate emerging public-private partnerships, technologies, and responses to online extremism.’ There are three leading aspects of concern that the issue will ...

  VOX-Pol has released its latest report in the VOX-Pol publication series, titled The Alt-Right Twitter Census:  Defining and Describing the Audience for Alt-Right Content on Twitter, authored by J.M. Berger, on 15 October 2018. About the Report This report defines and describes the alt-right audience on twitter, and identifies the top ten most influential twitter accounts ...

On October 2, Dr. Kate Coyer of  VOX-Pol partner institute CEU, spoke at a conference hosted by the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The conference was titled “Mind the gap: Radicalization and De-Radicalization in Theory and Practice“. Participants and speakers discussed differences and similarities between European states in tackling radicalization and de-radicalization, reasons and motives that drive ...

By Laura Jakli and Paul Gill This blog post summarises the preliminary results of a VOX-Pol supported study that estimates the effects of social media echo chambers on political polarisation. Social Media and Political Polarisation Countless news articles and studies argue that social media exacerbates political polarisation and distorts the political news landscape. The general argument put ...

By Jade Hutchinson The ‘Right’ Kind of Dogma Radical-right groups harness online platforms to disseminate dogmas against the ‘Other’. In response to an influx of foreign migrants, the concatenation of Islamist terrorism and record levels of distrust in government institutions, the radical-right is invigorated by an aggressive anti-‘Other’ sentiment. As the source of social anxiety and ...

On Thursday, 27 September, 2018 the Kozmetsky Center at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas featured VOX-Pol Coordinator, Prof. Maura Conway, for their first event of the 2018-2019 academic year. Prof. Conway’s presentation entitled “Understanding Exploitation of the Internet and Social Media in Promoting Violent Extremism and Terrorism”  drew an interested audience of students and faculty. Prof. Conway’s visit to Austin also included a ...

By Sam Jackson For years, researchers studying online political extremism have used computational tools to collect large amounts of data from social media, most often from Twitter. Two main logics guide these data collections: they can be built around users (e.g., collecting all tweets sent by given accounts) or they can be built around vocabulary (e.g., ...