News
New VOX-Pol Report: Extreme Digital Speech: Contexts, Responses and Solutions
January 7, 2020
VOX-Pol is pleased to present the latest report in the VOX-Pol publication series, titled Extreme Digital Speech: Contexts, Responses and Solutions, edited by Bharath Ganesh and Jonathan Bright. About the Report Extreme digital speech (EDS) is an emerging challenge that requires co-ordination between governments, civil society and the private sector. In this report, a range ...
Blog
Contenus Terroristes sur Internet: Le Futur Règlement Européen en Question
November 7, 2019
Par Laurence Bindner et Raphael Gluck, co-fondateurs de JOS Project Au cours de l’année 2018, alors que Daech recule de plus en plus sur le terrain, l’Etat islamique (EI) résiste sur un autre front, celui du djihad médiatique. Les nouvelles productions, en nombre certes réduit, continuent d’être diffusées sur le web, tandis que les archives ...
Blog
Fear, More Than Hate, Feeds Online Bigotry and Real-World Violence
March 13, 2019
By Adam G. Klein When a U.S. senator asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Can you define hate speech?” it was arguably the most important question that social networks face: how to identify extremism inside their communities. Hate crimes in the 21st century follow a familiar pattern in which an online tirade escalates into violent actions. ...
Blog
Tracing Transnational Linkages on Twitter: Mapping Indian Diaspora Supporters of Brexit and Trump
February 20, 2019
By Eviane Leidig A lacuna exists in the study of the radical right whereby researchers focus disproportionately on developments in Europe and North America. Yet, countries such as India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Brazil highlight how the radical right can operate, and indeed flourish, beyond the West. Our failure to incorporate these non-Western case studies poses ...
Blog
One-to-one Digital Interventions: How can Practitioners Directly Reach Young People Expressing Interest in Extremist Content Online?
January 30, 2019
VOX-Pol contributed to the inaugural Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) Civil Society Empowerment Programme (CSEP) campaigns event in Brussels this week. We therefore thought we’d share some insights from a previous RAN event focused on online CVE. [Ed.] Introduction It is an essential part of extremist propaganda and outreach to not only communicate their messages to ...
Blog
How Social Media Users in Kyrgyzstan are Turned into “Extremists”
January 9, 2019
By Elnura Alkanova Since the 2000s, social networks have been widely used both as platform for like-minded users and an instrument for spreading information and ideas. But the rapid dissemination of facts and opinions also results in an uncontrollable stream of information. As a result, we are witnessing an increasing number of posts with negative content ...
Blog
Upvoting Extremism, Part II: An Assessment of Extreme-Right Discourse on Reddit
December 5, 2018
By Tiana Gaudette, Garth Davies, and Ryan Scrivens This blog is Part II of II. Click here for Part I. This blog is the second of a two-part series that was presented at the ‘VOX-Pol Conference – Violent Extremism, Terrorism, and the Internet: Present and Future Trends’ in Amsterdam on 20 August 2018. Last week on ...
Blog
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Online Content Moderation
July 11, 2018
By Nick Feamster This post contains reflections from a Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society workshop on the use of artificial intelligence in governing communication online that took place earlier this year [Ed.] Context In the United States and Europe, many platforms that host user content, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, have enjoyed safe harbor protections for the ...
Blog
The Future of Detecting Extreme-right Sentiment Online
May 16, 2018
By Tiana Gaudette, Ryan Scrivens, and Garth Davies Since the advent of the Internet, far-right extremists – amongst other extremist movements – from across the globe have exploited online resources to build a transnational ‘virtual community’. The Internet is a fundamental medium that facilitates these radical communities, not only in ‘traditional’ hate sites such as Stormfront, ...
Blog
We Must Separate the Debates on Extremism and Encryption
September 20, 2017
By Tom Morrison-Bell The encryption debate has reared its head again as the Home Secretary visited the US to meet with tech firms to understand the work being done to tackle extremism. In an article in The Telegraph, the Home Secretary appears to restate the Government’s desire for some sort of back-door to end-to-end encryption ...