Blog
Blog
Reverse-Engineering the ISIS Playbook, Part II: CT-CVE Messaging Lessons from ISIS’s English-language Magazines
April 18, 2018By Haroro J. Ingram & Alastair Reed In Part I of this series, the authors presented the key findings of the CTSC Project’s latest publication titled “Islamic State’s English-language Magazines, 2014-17: Trends & Implications for CT-CVE Strategic Communications”. It began by highlighting the limitations inherent to studies of ISIS’s English language messaging before identifying the first ...
Blog
Reverse-Engineering the ISIS Playbook, Part I: CT-CVE Messaging Lessons from ISIS’s English-Language Magazines
April 13, 2018By Haroro J. Ingram & Alastair Reed The challenges associated with confronting militant Islamist propaganda have not waned with the territorial demise of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). Sure, ISIS’s propaganda output is down overall from the peaks of 2015 and this downward trend has provided the backdrop for periods of particularly sharp declines in mid-2016 and late-2017. ...
News
VOX-Pol at the International Studies Association Annual Convention 2018
April 11, 2018On 4-7 April, VOX-Pol researchers participated in the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention, in San Francisco, California. The ISA is one of the oldest interdisciplinary associations dedicated to understanding international, transnational and global affairs, with more than seven thousand members worldwide. Whilst topics covered at the conference are wide-ranging, there are always a large number of panels ...
Blog
Who Needs Courts? A Deeper Look At the European Commission’s Plans to Speed Up Content Takedowns
April 4, 2018By Emma Llansó In early March the European Commission released its “Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal content online”, which presents the Commission’s ideas for how to speed up removal of allegedly illegal content. (CDT’s full analysis of the Recommendation is here.) The Recommendation includes a number of departures from the traditional court-order process, which ...
Blog
Online Extremism: UK Government’s Islamic State Blocking Tool is Neat but Incomplete
March 28, 2018By Raheel Nawaz The UK government – with considerable pomp and ceremony – recently unveiled a new online tool for detection and removal of jihadi videos boasting a high success rate. It has been claimed by the Home Office that the machine learning tool, which the government developed with ASI Data Science, can identify 94% ...
Blog
The Islamic State’s Manipulation of Gender in their Online Information Operations
March 22, 2018By Kiriloi M. Ingram Since the self-proclaimed Caliphate’s inception, debate amongst scholars has ensued over whether the Islamic State’s (IS’s) muhajirat (female émigrés) would become female combatants. For example, Nelly Lahoud argues that IS is unlikely to devise a policy explicitly allowing women to engage in combat, as legitimating such a role would allow women to ...
Blog
The NRA’s Video Channel is a Hotbed of Online Hostility
March 14, 2018By Adam G. Klein As the National Rifle Association, the most influential gun rights advocacy group in the U.S., comes under pressure from victims’ groups and gun control advocates, internet companies like Amazon, Apple and YouTube are finding themselves uncomfortably close to the center of the controversy. These are among the companies that currently stream the ...
News
VOX-Pol Coordinator Participates at London Grid For Learning DigiSafe Conference
March 13, 2018On 9 March, 2018 VOX-Pol Coordinator Prof. Maura Conway presented a keynote on the issue of ‘Online Radicalisation: Then and Now’ at London Grid for Learning’s (LGfL) inaugural safeguarding conference. In her keynote, Maura outlined the significant changes observed in extremist recruitment, including that of so-called ‘Islamic State’ and the extreme right, over the past number of ...
News
VOX-Pol Coordinator Gives Evidence to House of Lords International Relations Committee
March 9, 2018On 7 March, 2018 VOX-Pol Coordinator Prof. Maura Conway gave evidence to the UK House of Lords International Relations Committee. The meeting was hosted by the Chairman of the Select Committee Lord Howell of Guildford in the Palace of Westminster. The purpose of the meeting was to gather opinions on the changes wrought by digital technologies in the international system, particularly the role of the Internet and its ...
Blog
Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter-Narratives – Part II: Ethical Considerations in Fighting ISIS Online
March 7, 2018This is the second in a two-part series; part one is HERE. By Anne Speckhard & Ardian Shajkovci Last week’s Blog post described ICVSE’s efforts directing counter narratives into the ISIS-dominated Internet space. This post discusses the ethics of attempting such interventions. As in all our work, our research ethics for Internet interventions with ISIS ...