Legislation
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Publicising Terrorism in Private: The Scope of the EU’s TCO Regulation
May 28, 2025By Stuart Macdonald In a recent article, co-authored with Jonathan Hall KC, I made the argument that it is possible to disseminate terrorist propaganda to the public in (what may be regarded by some as) private online spaces. Here, I outline this argument and consider its relevance to the EU’s Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation. ...
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The UK’s Online Safety Act and ‘Terrorist Content’
April 23, 2025By Katy Vaughan Ofcom, as the UK’s independent regulator of ‘Online Safety’ is taking a phased approach to the implementation of the Online Safety Act, which passed into law in October 2023. In December 2024 Ofcom published its statement on the progress of the first phase of implementation which focuses on ‘illegal harms’, including the ...
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Understanding How AI Fuels the Creation and Spread of Extremist Music
January 22, 2025By Heron Lopes On March 6th, the EU DisinfoLab will host a webinar discussing the findings of “Melodies of Malice”, one of the papers featured in this blog post. For more details and registration, visit: EU DisinfoLab Webinars – Melodies of Malice. Introduction Research on extremism and counter-terrorism has long underscored the role of far-right and extremist music ...
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The Band-Aid Solution of Regulation: How Moderating Social Media Can Aggravate Extremism Among Youth
January 15, 2025By Kate Scott On December 6, 2024, the intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes alliance—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—released a jointly authored report outlining the increasing concern of violent extremism among youth. The report sheds light on how extremist content online is being used to recruit, groom, and mobilize ...
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Examining the Persisting and Desisting Online Posting Behaviors of Violent and Non-Violent Right-Wing Extremists
December 18, 2024By Ryan Scrivens, Thomas W. Wojciechowski, Tiana Gaudette, and Richard Frank There is an ongoing need for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to identify and examine the online posting behaviors of violent extremists prior to their engagement in violence offline, but little is empirically known about their online presence generally or differences in their posting behaviors ...
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Social media influencers, the far right and their potential impact on youth (radicalisation)
November 13, 2024By Sophia Rothut, Darian Harff & Cornelius Puschmann In today’s digitalised world, social media platforms have evolved into powerful channels for disseminating political information and shaping political opinion. While these platforms can enhance democratic processes by, for instance, increasing opportunities to participate in political discussions or acquire political knowledge, they also pose challenges, particularly with ...
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Beyond Western Misogyny: A growing incel movement in Turkey?
November 6, 2024By Kamil Yilmaz and Joe Whittaker The past decade has seen several lone actor attacks conducted by men who identify as involuntary celibate (incels). The movement is well-known for being an online community of men who go online to discuss their inability to form sexual or romantic relationships, often resulting in extremely misogynistic online posts. ...
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Nazis at the salad bar: The National Workers’ Alliance and mixed, unclear, and unstable ideology
October 9, 2024By Gerard Gill Recent developments in violent extremism have included an uptick in the salience of mixed, unclear, and unstable (MUU) or ‘salad bar’ ideologies. These are worldviews where numerous, sometimes disparate perspectives combine in a dynamic and evolving manner, resulting in a belief system that is hard to comprehensively define. A growth in MUU ...
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Nazis en el bar de ensaladas: La Alianza Nacional de Trabajadores y la ideología mixta, confusa e inestable
October 9, 2024De Gerard Gill La evolución reciente del extremismo violentismo ha incluido un aumento de la prominencia de las ideologías mixtas, confusas e inestables (MCE) o ideologías ‘bar de ensaladas’. Estos son visiones del mundo en las que numerosas perspectivas, a veces dispares, se combinan de forma dinámica y evolutiva, dando lugar a un sistema de ...
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Bangladesh’s political transition viewed as opportunity by Islamic State and al-Qaeda
October 2, 2024By Sean McCafferty and Marjuka Binte Afzal Bangladesh’s recent political turmoil has sparked interest from Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda (AQ), both seeing the regime change as a strategic opportunity. With the government in transition, security reforms needed, and jihadist propaganda targeting Bangladesh, there is a risk of increased jihadist activity during the country’s democratic ...