Online extremism

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. ...

Hosted at Swansea University and attended by 250+ delegates from countries around the world, the TASM Conference is one of the leading international conferences on extremist and terrorist use of online platforms. Attended by a wide range of stakeholders, including tech companies, governments, law enforcement, regulators, civil society and researchers from many different academic disciplines, the ...

The Meta Oversight Board’s Advisory Opinion on Global Community Notes Rollout By Yohannes Eneyew Ayalew & Maria O’Sullivan Meta is a powerful global company, operating social media platforms that shape public opinion and influence elections. However, the company’s attempts to counter false or misleading information on its platforms has been the subject of widespread criticism ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 5 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. There is just over one month to go until the TASM (Terrorism and Social Media) Conference, which VOX-Pol is proud to co-organise. TASM is a collaborative, multistakeholder event. As well as more than 80 papers from academic researchers, there are many other sessions for attendees ...

By Kawser Ahmed As the nation mourns after Canada’s deadliest school shooting in modern history, a question looms for people both close to the events and further away: Why? As with other mass shootings, this painful question is complex and difficult to answer. As reported by the New York Times, an investigation into the shooter’s ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 3 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. The Only Way is Ethics: Next Gen Networks Unite The University of Southampton’s Centre for Criminology in the Digital Age is excited to convene an event dedicated to supporting the next generation of researchers working at the cutting edge of sensitive, ethically complex research. This ...

By Christopher V. David and Marten Risius Extremist groups operate in an environment where trust is existential and suspicion is constant—every new member could be an ally or an informant. The Provisional IRA, for example, famously operated a dedicated squad tasked with tracking down and liquidating informers within their ranks. Though in a spectacular twist, ...

By Bernadette Johnston Misogyny and problematic attitudes towards women are not new phenomena. What is new however is the speed and scale at which misogynistic ideas and related behaviours now circulate – particularly online. Problematic ‘nudification apps,’ whose sole purpose is to underdress and sexually transform photos of women online without their consent, have existed ...

Michelle Lynn Kahn, University of Richmond How can society police the global spread of online far-right extremism while still protecting free speech? That’s a question policymakers and watchdog organizations confronted as early as the 1980s and ’90s – and it hasn’t gone away. Decades before artificial intelligence, Telegram and white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ livestreams, far-right ...

By Antara Chakraborthy On the 19th of December 2024, Atul Subhash, a 28-year-old techie from Bangalore, India, recorded an 80-minute video blaming his wife, feminism, and the Indian court system, before ending his life. Within hours, his video and suicide note were widely circulated by India’s men’s rights organisations in India. Subash was hailed as ...