Radicalisation
Blog
The Role of the Internet in Facilitating Violent Extremism, Part I: Insights from Former Right-Wing Extremists
July 22, 2020This article is the first of a two-part series. It summarizes a recent study published in Terrorism and Political Violence. Part II is HERE. By Tiana Gaudette, Ryan Scrivens, and Vivek Venkatesh In the past five years, it has become increasingly common for practitioners and policymakers in the western world to draw from the insights ...
Blog
Jumanji Extremism? The Potential Role of Gamification and Games in Radicalisation Processes
July 8, 2020By Linda Schlegel The ‘gamification of terror’ has received increased attention in the last years, especially in the aftermath of the right-wing extremist attacks in Christchurch, El Paso and Halle, which were livestreamed by the perpetrators akin to ‘Let’s Play’ streams found in the gaming scene. Previously, ISIS had made headlines, because it used not ...
Blog
Kimberly Pullman: A Canadian Woman Lured Over the Internet to the ISIS Caliphate
April 22, 2020By Anne Speckhard “If I was going to die at least I could die helping children. [It’s] illogical that you are entering a war zone that you don’t know anything about … I felt if I did something good it would overwrite the bad that had happened.” — Canadian 46-year-old Kimberly Pullman, speaking about her decision ...
Blog
Don’t Just Blame YouTube’s Algorithms for ‘Radicalisation’. Humans Also Play a Part
December 18, 2019By Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández and Joanne Gray People watch more than a billion hours of video on YouTube every day. Over the past few years, the video sharing platform has come under fire for its role in spreading and amplifyingextreme views. YouTube’s video recommendation system, in particular, has been criticised for radicalising young people and steering viewers ...
Blog
An Overview of Radical Right-focused Presentations at #TASMConf 2019
July 10, 2019By Pamela Ligouri Bunker and Robert J. Bunker The 2019 Terrorism and Social Media (TASM) Conference took place on 25 and 26 June 2019 at Swansea University Bay Campus, Wales, United Kingdom. The conference was organised by Swansea University’s Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law and its Cyber Threats Research Centre (CYTREC), with the support ...
Blog
The Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral
May 29, 2019By Mike Caulfield Sam prides himself on questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting claims to intellectual scrutiny. For kids today, that means Googling stuff. One might think these searches would turn up a variety of perspectives, including at least a few compelling counterarguments. One would be wrong. The Google searches flooded his developing brain with endless ...
Blog
“Yes, I Can”: The Role of Perceived Self-Efficacy in Violent Radicalisation Processes
October 17, 2018By Linda Schlegel & Till Baaken In recent years, radicalisation, its causes and facilitating conditions as well as possible counter-strategies have been widely discussed within the academic community, among practitioners, and by politicians. Today, there are a variety of radicalisation models available in order to facilitate our understanding of this phenomenon and the empirical evidence is progressively ...
News
New VOX-Pol Report: Research Perspectives on Online Radicalisation
May 3, 2017Our latest report is launched today, May 03, 2017, available now in the VOX-Pol Online Library VOX-Pol has released its latest report in the VOX-Pol publication series, titled ‘Research Perspectives on Online Radicalisation: A Literature Review, 2006—2016’. Other reports in the series have included: Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the ...
Blog
Methodological problems in online radicalisation
March 15, 2017By Joe Whittaker There seems to be near-ubiquity between discussion of radicalisation to violent extremism and the Internet. Despite this, the study of online radicalisation remains under-researched and as a result ill-understood. This is, perhaps, surprising given the vast attention in the media that is given to the online presence of groups such as Islamic ...
Blog
Paths to Radicalism and Extremism
March 1, 2017This Blog post is a product of the ESRC-funded Youth Extremisms Research Seminar Series. By Prof. Hilary Pilkington Following significant electoral successes for populist radical right parties and several instances of extraordinary extremist violence, perpetrated by both jihadist and extreme right actors, the attention of scholars, journalists and politicians has understandably focussed upon extremist and radical growth ...