Online radicalisation

VOX-Pol participated in a two-day meeting hosted by the Insafe Network of Safer Internet Centres in Prague from 27-28 May. Insafe is a European network of 31 national awareness centres comprising the 27 EU member states and Iceland, Norway, Russia and Serbia. Each of the national centres implement awareness and educational campaigns, runs a helpline, ...

This blog is being published in two parts. Part two on 10 June by Nico Prucha With Arabic as the most important language for Islam, as the Qur’an is the speech of God (kalimat allah), revealed in Arabic, the lingua jihadica is likewise Arabic. Arabic key words of the jihadist segment, as a consequence, have ...

VOX-Pol participated in the Public Safety Canada Kanishka Project Symposium held in Ottawa, Canada from 30-31 March 2015. The Symposium surveyed social media/online-based research conducted under the Kanishka Project, a Canadian government initiative to invest in research on terrorism and counter-terrorism. The Symposium assessed what has been learned during the project, particularly in relation to ...

by Paul Gill Over the past few years, a number of concerns have been raised about both the nature of the Internet’s relationship with terrorism and the threat posed by lone-actor terrorists. Despite these growing concerns, both literatures have lacked an empirical focus. The tendency to focus upon theory-building and illustrative examples means that we ...

by Jamie Bartlett and Ali Fisher These days, you no longer need to fly halfway across the world to join your chosen extremist cause. You can be a jihadi from behind your screen, contributing to the effort with propaganda or cyber attacks. The public profile of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS) and their online supporters ...

On this week’s blog, Professor Gabriel Weimann discusses his new book, published this month, From Theatres to Cyberspace: The Media and Terrorism which examines changing arenas of terrorist communication with a particular focus on emerging trends in the use of social media. by Prof. Gabriel Weimann The seed was planted in 1972 in Munich, Germany. ...

Social media companies, law enforcement agencies and free speech activists all agree that open discussions among them are useful and necessary in dealing with the issue of social media being used as a recruitment tool by violent radical groups such as ISIS, VOX-Pol’s Dr. Maura Conway has said. Speaking to techPresident shortly after conclusion of ...

by Ruth Manning We live in an age where our political, religious, and other beliefs are being shaped by online content and interaction. Social media sites including Facebook and Twitter are powerful platforms that, amongst other things, present the opportunity for individuals to communicate radical ideas and opinions, and can therefore act as vehicles for ...

By Joseph A. Carter, Shiraz Maher and Peter R. Neumann Over a twelve month period from early 2013 to early 2014 a team of researchers at ICSR created a database of social media profiles of 190 Western and European foreign fighters. More than two thirds of these fighters were affiliated with Jabhat al-Nusrah or the ...

Did the Internet play a decisive role in Anders Behring Breivik’s violent radicalisation? In a recent study of Breivik’s online activities, I went through his posts on various message boards between 2002 and 2011, in addition to a collection of more than 7,000 of his private e-mails forwarded by Norwegian hackers to a Norwegian journalist ...