research

By Ninian Frenguelli It is increasingly difficult to access data from social media platforms. Researcher access to Meta platforms was removed in 2024 when CrowdTangle was shut down, but it was already being slowly restricted prior to this with Meta closing accounts of researchers in 2021. Researchers are in a difficult position: with no official ...

By Bo Min Keum & Richard Frank   N.B. Please be aware that this post contains slurs hostile to women, which some readers may find offensive and distressing. Reader discretion is therefore advised. (Ed.). Incel research is often conducted from the outside looking in. We were interested in how someone who has left and holds insider ...

By Joe Whittaker, Elizabeth Pearson, Ashley A. Mattheis, Till Baaken, Sara Zeiger, Farangiz Atamuradova, & Maura Conway There are two words that will strike fear into the hearts of many researchers of online deviance: “Ethics Committee.” Attend a conference or workshop, it is commonplace to have discussions about bureaucratic nightmares which stifle the ability of ...

By Katy Vaughan, Hadley Middleton, and Evan James The biennial Terrorism and Social Media (TASM) conference took place at Swansea University’s Bay Campus on 18th and 19th June 2024, with over 250 delegates from more than 20 countries. The event brings together a range of researchers, policymakers and practitioners from a number of different countries ...

By Ursula Schmid, Heidi Schulze and Antonia Drexel Memes are an important part of social media communication, frequently associated with contemporary (pop)culture. Even though most people use memes for benign purposes, beneath the surface of seemingly innocent jokes lies a darker underbelly: there has been a substantial debate regarding the use of memes to spread ...

By Joe Whittaker, Farangiz Atamuradova, Kamil Yilmaz, Simon Copeland, Lilah El Sayed, Jon Deedman Short form video has, put simply, become one of the most popular social media formats on the Internet. By “short form” we mean videos of around 30-90 seconds; each platform that utilises it has their own specifications about the minimum and ...

By Nick Robinson Introduction With over 11bn views on TikTok and accusations that his extreme views are creating real world harm, Andrew Tate’s rise has precipitated alarm amongst policy makers, the media and the public and is symptomatic of the ‘growing visibility of online “manfluencers” who espouse extreme masculine ideals and share them with their ...

By Elisa Orofino Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT, literally “the Party of Liberation”) stands as one of the most long-living, transnational Islamist groups inspiring movements and organisations around the world since its inception in 1953 in Palestine. While no official figures on the membership have ever been published, it seems fair to state the HT is currently ...

By Matthew K. Carter On July 9, 2022, fourteen-year-old Ethan Reyes, better known as drill rapper Notti Osama, was stabbed to death on a New York City subway platform during a confrontation with a fifteen-year-old rival gang member. A couple months later, drill rappers Kyle Richh, Tata, and Jenn Carter, all members of the rap ...

By Esteban Villa-Turek, Rod Abhari, Mowafak Allaham, Chloe Mortenson & Ayse D. Lokmanoglu Introduction On November 3, 2020, as presidential votes were being cast around the United States, another form of political discussion was taking place on Parler, a far-right social media platform. Users had been using memes to shape the discussion around political events ...