Social Media

By The Soufan Centre On June 7, 2021, the European Union (EU) adopted new rules, known as the Terrorist Content Online Regulation (2021/784), targeting the online dissemination of terrorist content. The new rules are the most aggressive effort to date by the EU to compel hosting service providers to remove terrorist content. There is little doubt that ...

By Wasim Ahmed When I wrote the original version of this post back in 2015, and the revised versions in 2017 and 2019, I wasn’t sure how long Twitter would provide access to its data. This was because after a string of public scandals other platforms such as Facebook had been closing or limiting access. Fast-forward to 2021, and something ...

By Nathalie Collins New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has called for “ethical algorithms” to help stop online radicalisation. She made her call at the second summit of the “Christchurch Call” for action to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. The first Christchurch Call summit was convened by Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron ...

Want to submit a blog post? Click here. This Blog post summarises a conclusion paper from the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network.  By Jordy Krasenberg and Julia Handle  The perspective on the role of (young) women in extremism has changed over the last years towards better understanding of how women radicalise, how they are recruited, and ...

Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Joan Barata According to the latest figures provided by Facebook, 99,6% of the content actioned on grounds of terrorism (mostly related to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates) was found and flagged before any user reported it. This being said, it is also worth noting ...

VOX-Pol expertise has been featured in the news since the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021. The events, which led to five deaths, sparked a discussion about online deplatforming. VOX-Pol Fellows, such as JM Berger, Bharath Ganesh, Sam Jackson and Maura Conway have been quoted in The New York Times, VOX, ...

By Alex Newhouse Early in the morning of Jan. 11, the social media platform Parler went offline after Amazon withdrew the platform’s web hosting services. Parler sued Amazon in response. Amazon’s move followed Google and Apple’s banning the Parler app from their app stores. The tech companies cited the platform’s inability or unwillingness to block calls for and threats of ...

By Joe Whittaker & Chamin Herath On 15 March, 2019, a far-right terrorist conducted two consecutive attacks at Mosques in New Zealand’s capital, Christchurch. The attacker killed 51 people who had come for Friday Prayers and injured 40 more. In August of 2020 he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for his crimes. ...

By Vivian Gerrand The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified calls for urgent action to mitigate some of the worst harms societies are experiencing as a consequence of time spent immersed in social media environments. During the lockdowns, this immersion has gone from partial to almost total. While social media enables information to travel fast, it allows disinformation to spread ...

By Dimitrios Kalantzis Less than 24 hours after John Earnest opened fire at a San Diego-area synagogue killing one person and injuring three others, the focus of the developing story shifted to his digital life. News outlets reported that Earnest “posted an anti-Jewish screed online about an hour before the attack” and “praised the suspects ...