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News
VOX-Pol Summer School 2016: Topics in Violent Online Political Extremism
December 17, 2015Course Date: July 4-9, 2016 Organized by the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) at the Central European University (CEU) and VOX-Pol Network of Excellence Course Director(s): Eva Bognar (Center for Media, Data and Society at SPP of CEU, Budapest, Hungary) Maura Conway (Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland) Kate Coyer (Center for Media, Data and Society at SPP ...
Blog
The Decline in Islamic State Media Output
December 16, 2015by Aaron Y Zelin Over the years, I identified the pace at which a jihadi group releases content as one of the general indicators of its health. When AQAP and AQIM were in control of territory, they were churning out a lot more content than after they withdrew. Similarly, as Ansar al-Sharia in Libya lost ...
News
Call for Extended Abstracts: VOX-Pol Workshop on Critiquing the Discourse of Violent Online Radicalisation (8 – 9 March 2016, Hamburg)
December 15, 2015The discourse of violent online radicalisation has been mainstreamed, being increasingly prevalent in both policy circles and media representations. On 8 – 9 March 2016, VOX-Pol will convene a workshop at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) on critiquing the discourse of violent online radicalisation. The objective ...
Blog
Technology, Terrorism and Online Behaviour
December 9, 2015by Carl Miller In June, the SAS and heavily armed police poured onto the streets of London. Fire brigade and paramedics appeared wearing flak jackets and explosions, sirens and automatic gunfire drowned out the sounds of the early morning commute. Men with balaclavas were seen running from building to building, and into Aldwych tube station. ...
News
VOX-Pol Launched Online Library of Publications Related to Violent Online Political Extremism
December 8, 2015On 8 December VOX-Pol launched our Online Library, an exciting new research and teaching resource, on its website: www.voxpol.eu. The Library currently has over 250 publications related to various aspects of Violent Online Political Extremism included within it, which makes it the biggest such collection available in one place online today. Users can download all open ...
News
Dr. Maura Conway Contributes to OII and Google Internet Leadership Academy
December 5, 2015VOX-Pol Coordinator Dr. Maura Conway (DCU) participated in a panel discussion at the final day of the Internet Leadership Academy in Dublin on 4 December. The Academy was convened by our VOX-Pol partner, the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), together with Google, with the aim of providing an objective overview of all sides of the major policy debates shaping ...
Blog
Anonymous Can’t Defeat Islamic State, but Here’s What it Could Achieve
December 2, 2015by Andres Guadamuz The announcement that hacktivist collective Anonymous has declared war on the Islamic State has been received positively by the public. After the Paris attack some may think governments are not doing enough to protect civilians, so at least it seems someone is doing something about the terrorist threat. So far the group ...
News
Reminder: Lunch Briefing Series
November 30, 2015This is a reminder regarding the final two sessions of VOX-Pol’s Lunch Briefing Series. On Wednesday, 2 December, Dr. Nico Prucha (VOX-Pol Fellow, ICSR) will discuss ‘Online Environments and the Violent Jihad,’ with a particular focus on the content produced and disseminated in the wake of the Paris Attacks. For more details, click HERE. The final Briefing will take place on ...
Blog
Anonymous Hackers could be Islamic State’s Online Nemesis
November 25, 2015by Athina Karatzogianni One of the key issues the West has had to face in countering Islamic State (IS) is the jihadi group’s mastery of online propaganda, seen in hundreds of thousands of messages celebrating the atrocities against civilians and spreading the message of radicalisation. It seems clear that efforts to counter IS online are missing ...
Publications
Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material
November 23, 2015Authors Ian Brown and Josh Cowls Abstract This report draws on insights from representatives of civil society, law enforcement and industry groups to offer fresh perspectives on the policing of extremist material online. Evidently, the Internet now serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold ...