Online extremism

Want 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 ...

This 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 ...

This 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 ...

This 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 ...

This 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 ...

VOX-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, ...

VOX-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 ...

By 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 ...

By Elise Thomas Online radicalisation has been a significant point of focus for the national security community in recent years. Much of this attention has been directed, rightly, at the risks posed by Islamic extremism, far-right extremism and white supremacist movements. However, far less attention has been paid to an equally dangerous and arguably more ...

By Dr. William Allchorn In late January this year, the outgoing director general of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, Sir Andrew Parker, suggested that technology was one of the biggest challenges facing the UK’s Security Services. Sir Andrew said he was particularly interested in artificial intelligence “because of our need to be able to make sense of ...