Blog

by Elizabeth Pearson In the past two years, the so-called Islamic State (IS) has made Twitter its own, many of its supporters even describing the social media forum as an IS ‘wilayat’ or ‘province’. As academics and policy-makers alike become increasingly aware of the role of the online environment in radicalisation, the use of Twitter ...

by J.M Berger The world continues to deal with the offline consequences of how ISIS works online, hunting among the fringes of society for those rare individuals who can be convinced to act on its behalf. Its success comes in part from volume – social media makes it possible to sift efficiently through more potential ...

VOX-Pol was represented by our Coordinator, Dr. Maura Conway (DCU), at Club De Madrid’s global policy dialogue ‘Madrid +10: Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism‘, which took place in Madrid, Spain, from 27 – 28 October, 2015. VOX-Pol partner, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London, was co-convenor of ...

Launching 4 November 2015 at the VOX-Pol Lunch Briefing Series In London, on November 4 2015, Dr. Paul Gill will present findings from his co-authored research report entitled ‘What are the Roles of the Internet in Terrorism? Measuring Online Behaviours of Convicted UK Terrorists’, based upon recent VOX-Pol funded research. This report will be formally launched ...

by Helen Vatsikopoulos At the ongoing coronial inquest into the deaths arising from last year’s Lindt café siege in Sydney, experts cannot agree whether Man Haron Monis was a radicalised terrorist or a mentally unstable lone wolf who used radical Islam as a “crutch”. Throughout the inquest, prosecutors, solicitors and detectives are being grilled about ...

by Steven Luckert In 1924, Adolf Hitler described propaganda as “a terrible weapon in the hands of an expert.” For two decades, the Nazis showed the world what a devastating weapon it could be. They won over millions of Germans to their extremist goals in a democracy by branding their movement with powerful symbols and ...

This Autumn, the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence invites you to a series of Lunchtime Briefing Seminars, each exploring a different aspect of Violent Online Political Extremism. Sessions run each week, with themes covered including lone actor terrorists and online influences; IS, social media, and violent online Jihad; the Internet and the extreme right; female IS ...

by Andrew Murray Last week reports emerged in the media that the proposed Investigatory Powers Bill may lead to the banning of popular communications apps Snapchat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. This was in many ways not news as the same reports had appeared in January but with the Home Secretary announcing that the Bill would be published in the ...

VOX-Pol’s Dr. Kate Coyer, also Director of the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary participated in the “Media Freedom and Responsibilities in the Context of Counter-Terrorism Policies” workshop organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Bucharest, Romania from 7- 8 October 2015. The workshop focussed ...

By Irene McGinn and Adam Joinson This blog post explores the reasons why some online ideological groups take action while others do not and focuses on to what extent the online communications of ideological groups contribute to direct collective action. In order to address this question, we examined a number of online groups using a variety of ...