Blog
Blog
Malheureusement, Nous Ne Sommes Pas Tous Charlie: Combating (Online) Radicalism
January 14, 2015by David Stevens and Kieron O’Hara The attacks by Islamist gunmen on the Parisian offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and elsewhere have shocked the world, drawing attention away from ISIS and the Syria and Iraq conflicts, and back to the apparent enemy within. Europe’s wealthy, tolerant and secure democracies, the story goes, harbour a critical ...
Blog
Popular Online Figures who Inspire the Syrian Fighters
January 7, 2015By Joseph A. Carter, Shiraz Maher and Peter R. Neumann Over a twelve month period from early 2013 to early 2014 a team of researchers at ICSR created a database of social media profiles of 190 Western and European foreign fighters. More than two thirds of these fighters were affiliated with Jabhat al-Nusrah or the ...
Blog
Down the (White) Rabbit Hole: The Extreme Right and Online Recommender Systems
December 1, 2014by Derek O’Callaghan YouTube’s status as the most popular video sharing platform means that it is especially useful to political extremists in their efforts to influence a wide audience. We often see links to associated videos and channels on YouTube being propagated on other social media platforms such as Twitter. In this analysis, we were ...
Blog
In the Wake of Lee Rigby Inquiry, Remember Radicalisation and Terrorism are not the Same
November 27, 2014by Matthew Francis A parliamentary inquiry has cleared MI5 of failing to prevent the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013. This despite the fact that his killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were both subjects of previous investigations by the security services – investigations which showed that both men had been radicalised. Inevitably this conclusion ...
Blog
Counterterrorism Messaging Needs To Move From State to CIA
November 17, 2014by Philip Seib The State Department is trying hard to counter online propaganda from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The information battleground includes Twitter and video messages, terrain that ISIL knows well. In addition to having too little money and too few people, the department is forced to conform to federal rules requiring that its ...
Newsletter
VOX-Pol Newsletter 1(3) November 2014
November 14, 2014Dear Reader, Welcome to the third issue of the VOX-Pol Newsletter! The VOX-Pol Network of Excellence is a European Union Framework Programme 7 funded academic research network focused on researching the prevalence, contours, functions, and impacts of Violent Online Political Extremism and responses to it. It is a five-year programme which commenced on 1 January, 2014. ...
Blog
Coming Face to Face With the New Normal in Internet Research
November 10, 2014by Elizabeth Buchanan When news of the Facebook contagion study hit, I was presenting a session on research ethics to the VOX-Pol summer school at Dublin City University. I had intended to discuss the Belfast Project as an example of social, behavioural, and educational research gone badly—indeed, this project had international intrigue, raised serious issues ...
Blog
Review: Jihadi Culture on the World Wide Web
November 3, 2014by Anne Stenersen In Jihadi Culture on the World Wide Web, Gilbert Ramsay challenges existing assumptions about the phenomenon of ‘online jihadism’. He argues that a clear distinction be drawn between the offline and online activities of al-Qaida’s supporters. Consumption of ‘jihadi’ content online is not necessarily a step towards engagement in real-world violence, but a cultural ...
Blog
The Online Life of a Modern Terrorist: Anders Behring Breivik’s Use of the Internet
October 28, 2014Did the Internet play a decisive role in Anders Behring Breivik’s violent radicalisation? In a recent study of Breivik’s online activities, I went through his posts on various message boards between 2002 and 2011, in addition to a collection of more than 7,000 of his private e-mails forwarded by Norwegian hackers to a Norwegian journalist ...
News
Call for extended abstracts: Workshop on the ethics and politics of online monitoring of violent extremism (January 19-20, 2015, Brussels)
October 27, 2014On 19-20 January 2015, the VOX-Pol network is organising a workshop in Brussels on the ethics and politics of the day-to-day monitoring of the Net for material promoting violent extremism — by police, intelligence agencies, the Internet industry, and private groups and individuals. It will be a fully participative event, with short keynotes from leading experts ...