Extremism

By Colin M. Fisher, UCL Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes in how the company addresses misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Instead of relying on independent third-party factcheckers, Meta will now emulate Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in using “community notes”. These crowdsourced contributions allow users to flag content they ...

By David Wells Tariffs might not be the only trade obstacle with Trump’s America. “Censorship” could be the next test. There are multiple explanations for January’s changes in how Meta will moderate content across its platforms, including financial ones, the evolving views of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Meta’s policies simply swaying in line with the political pendulum. ...

By Brenna Helm, Thomas J. Holt, Ryan Scrivens, Thomas W. Wojciechowski, and Richard Frank This article summarizes a recent study published in Crime and Delinquency. Involuntary celibates, or incels, have been of heightened interest to scholars and practitioners due to their ongoing engagement in misogynistic and violent discourse. Yet the incel subculture is complex, requiring ...

By Erin Stoner Trump’s election victory was met with a barrage of online discourse; his supporters celebrated his second electoral win and his opponents solemnly braced themselves for what the next four years may bring. In mere hours after his victory, out of the online woodwork emerged right-wing political commentators, high on success. Of note, ...

By Bo Min Keum Incel communities raise concerns about their misogyny and its potential to take radical forms and inspire extremist violence. However, they also exhibit considerable self-loathing and suicidal thoughts, often discussing methods to end one’s life and their term ‘rope’ serving as a common reference to suicide. I was curious to understand the ...

By Darja Wischerath This blog post is a condensed version of a recently published article in New Media + Society. To read the full article click here. The mainstreaming of conspiracy theories has coincided with a troubling rise in real-world violence. From attacks on infrastructure to mass shootings justified by extremist beliefs, conspiracy narratives increasingly ...

By Joshua Bowes and Jennifer West Introduction In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, social media was replete with reactionary misogynistic hate and vitriol. Election experts and disinformation observers pointed to the manosphere as the biggest catalyst of votes for Trump, suggesting that thousands of young men turned out late on election day ...

By Stephanie Wescott, Monash University and Steven Roberts, Monash University The UK government has recently announced a review into their counter-terrorism strategy, focussing on responses to “extremist ideologies”. This announcement named misogyny as one of its extremist ideological trends of interest. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: For too long, governments have failed to address the ...

By Harald Sick and Maik Fielitz Tweets, blog posts, stories, reels, snaps, TikToks, short messages and live streams: there is a multitude of (self-)presentation types and, in principle, no restriction on which digital media formats extremist actors use. In times when the (counter) public is fragmented across many platforms, those who want to reach the ...

By Daniel E. Levenson In the early to mid-19th century the organizations and ideologues who would form the vanguard of modern terrorism did a remarkable job of leverage emerging technology for both training and operational purposes. This often took the form of experimentation with new (and often unregulated) materials such as dynamite and crude IEDs ...