Social Media

By Krista Fisher, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Emily Lewis, Ruben Benakovic, and Zac Seidler Interest in the manosphere has recently surged yet again, with the recent Louis Theroux documentary catapulting the term “manosphere” back to the forefront of our cultural psyche. The term has become a catchall for the most inflammatory content and communities in young men’s ...

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 Kamil Yilmaz In April 2026, Türkiye was shaken by two unprecedented school shootings in the country’s southeastern region. The first attack was carried out on April 14 by Ömer Ket, a 19-year-old former student at Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Siverek, Şanlıurfa, who injured 16 people before dying by suicide. ...

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 ...

The Meta Oversight Board’s Advisory Opinion on Global Community Notes Rollout By Yohannes Eneyew Ayalew & Maria O’Sullivan Meta is a powerful global company, operating social media platforms that shape public opinion and influence elections. However, the company’s attempts to counter false or misleading information on its platforms has been the subject of widespread criticism ...

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 ...

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 Sean McCafferty In recent years there has been suggestion of a tech backslide by major social media platforms, leading to a reduction in proactive content moderation. This has become a significant concern for scholars of online terrorism. This blog post examines a sample of empirical data from Facebook that suggests there is a resurgence ...