Online extremism
Blog
The Digital Gaps
June 2, 2021By Dieter Loraine Yet again during this COVID pandemic, terrorist and violent extremist organisations have proven adept at using the internet and digital technology to further their aims, reach new audiences and recruit people to commit violent acts. Government policies and responses at all levels have been in a state of constant catch up to ...
Blog
Jacinda Ardern Calls for ‘Ethical Algorithms’ to Combat Online Extremism. What This Means
May 26, 2021By Nathalie Collins New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has called for “ethical algorithms” to help stop online radicalisation. She made her call at the second summit of the “Christchurch Call” for action to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. The first Christchurch Call summit was convened by Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron ...
Blog
Meet BreadTube, the YouTube Activists Trying to Beat the Far-right at Their Own Game
March 31, 2021Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Alexander Mitchell Lee YouTube has gained a reputation for facilitating far-right radicalisation and spreading antisocial ideas. However, in an interesting twist, the same subversive, comedic, satiric and ironic tactics used by far-right internet figures are now being countered by a group of leftwing YouTubers known as “BreadTube”. By making videos ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part IV: Predicting Extremist Behaviour
March 24, 2021This is the fourth and final in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE the second is HERE the third is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The previous cluster of methods looked at in the blog post series included methods developed to extrapolate insight from the content produced online and on social ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part III: Analysing Extremist Content
March 17, 2021This is the third in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE and the second is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The previous blog posts looked at the costs and benefits of using network analysis to identify extremist networks. It suggested that one challenge in such network analysis-based research approaches is ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part II: Identifying Extremist Networks
March 10, 2021This is the second in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The first blog post in this series explored how researchers interested in computational methods can assess the trade-off between the validity of the methods used and the potentially adverse social costs of using them in ...
Blog
‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part I: A Framework for Researchers
March 3, 2021This series of four blog posts builds on discussions had during the ‘Inside the Black Box of “Terrorism Informatics”: A Cost-benefit Analysis of Using Computational Techniques in Violent Online Political Extremism Research’ workshop organised by VOX-Pol in 2018. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen One of the most pressing challenges in research on violent online extremism is ...
News
VOX-Pol in the News
January 25, 2021VOX-Pol expertise has been featured in the news since the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021. The events, which led to five deaths, sparked a discussion about online deplatforming. VOX-Pol Fellows, such as JM Berger, Bharath Ganesh, Sam Jackson and Maura Conway have been quoted in The New York Times, VOX, ...
News
VOX-Pol contributes to UK Government Report on Online Extremism
May 11, 2020VOX-Pol’s Coordinator, Professor Maura Conway, was interviewed for a new report on Online Extremism by the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). POST produces peer-reviewed and impartial scientific research briefings for the UK Parliament in the form of four-page POSTnotes, which are informed by literature reviews and stakeholder interviews. This POSTnote describes how ...
Blog
Where to Publish Academic Research on Online Extremism and Terrorism?: What We Can Learn from Journal Article Entries in VOX-Pol’s Online Library
May 7, 2020By Louise Laing and Maura Conway One of the questions we get asked quite often at VOX-Pol—by not just PhD students and early career researchers, but established scholars too and, in fact, that we quite often ask ourselves! — is ‘what are appropriate academic journals for publication of research on online extremism and terrorism?’ A generic ...