Online extremism

By Wyn Brodersen and Maik Fielitz Antisemitic content on TikTok rarely announces itself. It arrives as a number, an emoji, a joke about a hollow earth — and that is exactly what makes it spread. In February 2026, a local politician for Germany’s far-right AfD shared a video on Instagram. Its text asked whether “an ...

By J.M. Berger This article is an adapted and lightly edited excerpt from Online Extremism, a chapter in the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Online Violent Extremism. While the Internet can be and is used as a simple broadcasting tool for spreading ideas and ideologies to new audiences, its most powerful innovation was participation. Unlike radio ...

By Sören Henrich, Jeremiah Perez-Torres, Séan Looney, and Brigitte Naderer At this year’s Terrorism and Social Media (TASM) Conference, our goal was to hear from as many different voices in the field as possible as part of launching our project, “Crisis, Connectivity, and Meaning: Exploring Youth Extremism in the Digital Age”, funded by the Critical ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 8 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter Back to the Classroom: VOX-Pol Resources to Support Your Teaching and Student Learning With the new academic year getting underway shortly, we wanted to draw attention to some of the VOX-Pol resources available to support your teaching and student learning and research on online ...

By Sarah Stevenson & Dr Steven Barracosa At risk and radicalised youth represent one of the most complex and consequential challenges facing contemporary CVE practice given the intersection of adolescent vulnerability, search for belonging, identity formation and exposure to extreme material and polarising online environments. The role and impact of family systems and dynamics have ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 7 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter TASM 2026 VOX-Pol was proud to co-host the fifth in-person TASM Conference, held at Swansea University on 16-18 June. There were a total of 293 registered delegates, from 30 countries around the world. As well as keynote presentations from VOX-Pol member Professor Paul Gill ...

VOX-Pol is delighted to announce the upcoming publication of The Routledge Handbook of Online Violent Extremism, produced in proud partnership with our network. Scheduled for release in September 2026, this landmark volume represents a major milestone in the study of digital threats and responses. This handbook stands as the first comprehensive reference work to offer ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 6 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter Catch Up on the 2026 VOX-Pol Lecture Series! We are thrilled to share that the latest 2026 VOX-Pol Lecture Series is now fully recorded and available to view on the VOX-Pol YouTube channel.This curated series brings together world-leading scholars, tech experts, and practitioners to ...

By Saif Tahir Nihilism, defined by the ISD as “an ideology that centres around rejection of all moral and social values with the belief that life is meaningless,” rose to recent prominence after the detection and arrest of members of the decentralised COM and 764 networks who were found coercing minors aged 8-17 into violence. ...

By Kamil Yilmaz In April 2026, Türkiye was shaken by two unprecedented school shootings in the country’s southeastern region. The first attack was carried out on April 14 by Ömer Ket, a 19-year-old former student at Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Siverek, Şanlıurfa, who injured 16 people before dying by suicide. ...