Online radicalisation

By Inger Storm Sandboe and Antara Chakraborthy Introduction Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary on the manosphere has renewed mainstream attention to online subcultures often dismissed as fringe. This coincides with a broader discursive shift: the normalisation of a distinct ‘biological’ vocabulary in manosphere discourse. This rhetoric usually relies on a weak scientific basis, selectively interpreted or ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 Andrew Whiting Having begun their inquiries in May 2025, the Home Affairs Select Committee last month published their report into combatting new forms of extremism. The report is a welcome addition to the discussion with several important recommendations. The range of expertise the committee engaged with has helped give it good coverage across a range of ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 4 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT Political Theology and the Digital Caliphate: Jihadism in the Age of Globalisation11 June 2026, 10:00-17:00Avenue Campus (room: TBC),University of Southampton This workshop invites contributions that examine the relationship between globalisation and the revival of the caliphate in contemporary Islamist thought and activism. Moving ...

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 ...

Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 2 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. A list of confirmed speakers and panels for this year’s TASM conference is now available! Co-organised by CYTREC and VOX-Pol, TASM 2026 will feature more than 70 presentations, delivered by speakers from around the world, as well as a wide variety of different panels, stakeholder-led workshops and the TASM sandpit. ...

By Alessandro Bolpagni, Eleonora Ristuccia, and Grazia Ludovica Giardini More than ten years ago, Halummu launched an online campaign entitled “Supporting Ribat and Jihad” to urge IS munasirin to spread IS propaganda material “to as many platforms and accounts as possible”, underlying that the “ongoing war between the camp of kufr and the camp of ...