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VOX-Pol Newsletter 2(1) February 2015
February 12, 2015Welcome to Vol. 2, Iss. 1 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. Year 1 of VOX-Pol was a resounding success. In the 12 months to December 2014, we hosted three events to which we welcomed 163 attendees from 24 countries (12 EU Member States and 12 non-EU countries). Our website has gathered 20,000 page-views by 5,000 visitors ...
Blog
Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics & Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material
February 11, 2015by Ian Brown The second Vox-Pol workshop, on the ethics and politics of online monitoring of violent extremism, took place in Brussels from 19-20 January. Around thirty experts – from law enforcement and intelligence agencies, governments and parliaments, civil society, and universities – met for two days to discuss the challenges that have dominated the ...
Blog
Social Media and Conflict Zones: The New Evidence Base for Policymaking
February 4, 2015by Eliot Higgins In recent years, content shared via social media from conflict war zones has allowed us to gain a far deeper understanding of the on-the-ground realities of specific conflicts than previously possible. This presents a real opportunity for providing robust evidence which can underpin foreign and security policymaking about emerging, or rapidly escalating, ...
News
VOX-Pol talks to Belgian public broadcaster about the online strategies of radical groups
February 3, 2015VOX-Pol’s Principle Investigator Dr Maura Conway and Professor Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a VOX-Pol partner institution, appeared on VRT, Belgium’s Flemish language public broadcaster, earlier this month. Professor Brown and Dr Conway discussed the role of the Internet in violent extremism and the social media strategies of radical groups such as ...
News
Fight against terrorism online must protect & respect human rights – MacKinnon
January 29, 2015Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices Online and Director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at New America, testified on Tuesday before the the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Sub-committee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade on ‘The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda: The Paris Attack and Social Media.’ MacKinnon will be speaking at VOX-Pol’s 5 – 6 March workshop at Central ...
Blog
Emergence and Role(s) of Online Disseminators in the Syria Conflict
January 28, 2015by Ruth Manning We live in an age where our political, religious, and other beliefs are being shaped by online content and interaction. Social media sites including Facebook and Twitter are powerful platforms that, amongst other things, present the opportunity for individuals to communicate radical ideas and opinions, and can therefore act as vehicles for ...
News
VOX-Pol organises panel at CPDP conference
January 22, 2015There was standing room only at the VOX-Pol panel at yesterday’s CPDP conference. The 8th International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) is ongoing in Brussels until Friday, 23 January. The event features 70 panels covering a wide range of current debates such as mobile technologies, border surveillance, big data, encryption, privacy and ...
Blog
Malheureusement, Nous Ne Sommes Pas Tous Charlie 2: Rules of Engagement
January 21, 2015by David Stevens and Kieron O’Hara Last week in this blog, we argued that goods such as belonging and commitment were the chief drivers of extremist groups, alongside a rejection of mainstream thinking. In a book which appears next month, The Devil’s Long Tail, we claim that suppressing ideological messages in the hope of preventing ...
News
Call for extended abstracts: VOX-Pol Workshop on the role of social media and internet companies in responding to violent online extremism (5-6 March, Budapest)
January 20, 2015On March 5-6, 2015, the VOX-Pol network will convene a workshop at Central European University in Budapest on the role of social media and internet companies in responding to violent online political extremism and the impacts on freedom of expression. This call is especially timely given the Joint Statement of EU Ministers for Interior and ...
News
Agenda: Ethics and Politics of Online Monitoring of Violent Extremism Workshop
January 17, 2015Monday 19 January 12.00-13:00: Lunch 13:00-15:00: Session One Chair: Ian Brown, Oxford Internet Institute Sadhbh McCarthy, Centre for Irish and European Security: The role of trust, insights and confidence on the use of OSINT (or SOCMINT) for intelligence purposes incl. in relation to the identification of violent extremism Akil Awan, Royal Holloway, University of London: ...