Blog
From the French Revolution, the First Amendment and the Third Reich to Twitter and Facebook: The Impact of Legal Histories on the Fight Against Online Extremism – Part 1: France
February 12, 2020
By Nery Ramati The need to develop legal tools in order to cope with the dangers of online extremism and terrorism has been an issue that has kept legislators, government officials, and security forces around the globe very busy in recent years. In liberal democracies, the legal challenges are intensified due to the obvious dangers ...
News
New VOX-Pol Report: How Extreme is the European Far Right?
November 12, 2019
VOX-Pol is pleased to present a new report in the VOX-Pol publication series, titled How Extreme is the European Far-Right? Investigating Overlaps in the German Far-Right Scene on Twitter by Reem Ahmed and Daniela Pisoiu. The launch – in print and online – takes place at the final Lunch Briefing session on 12 November 2019 ...
Blog
Innocent Users Have the Most to Lose in the Rush to Address Extremist Speech Online
October 31, 2019
By Jillian C. York and Eliot Harmon Internet Companies Must Adopt Consistent Rules and Transparent Moderation Practices Big online platforms tend to brag about their ability to filter out violent and extremist content at scale, but those same platforms refuse to provide even basic information about the substance of those removals. How do these platforms ...
Blog
What can we learn from the online response to the Halle terrorist attack?
October 24, 2019
Summary Since the Christchurch attack great efforts have been made to coordinate tech sector response to content incidents however more work is required to coordinate behaviour across mainstream media, academia, government, and the broader tech industry Both smaller platforms and larger platforms were prompt in dealing with the proliferation of the video – it was only circulated ...
Blog
Using Twitter as a Data Source: An Overview of Social Media Research Tools (2019)
October 16, 2019
By Wasim Ahmed This post builds upon the 2015, and 2017 editions of this post, captures key trends and events which are shaping social media research for social scientists and provides a collection of research methods and tools for the analysis of social media data. Since the 2017 edition of this blog post, I have ...
Blog
From Telegram to Twitter: The Lifecycle of Daesh Propaganda Material
September 11, 2019
By Mohammed Al Darwish A typical Daesh propaganda release goes through multiple phases on its journey from Telegram to reach more popular social web platforms like Twitter.1 This transition from Telegram to a wider audience on a more accessible platform requires the intervention of “fanboys” who dedicate their time and effort to spreading the propaganda ...
Blog
An Overview of Radical Right-focused Presentations at #TASMConf 2019
July 10, 2019
By 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
What Does the ‘New Right’ Have to do With the Christchurch Attack? Some Evidence from Twitter on Discursive Overlaps
April 17, 2019
By Reem Ahmed and Daniela Pisoiu In a globalized world, events thousands of miles away have far-reaching effects, mostly through their spectacularism. Oftentimes, these events feel even closer to home when there are ideas and people who might have in one way or another contributed to the facilitation of such atrocities. Right-wing extremism has long ...
Blog
Algorithmic Hate: Brenton Tarrant and the Dark Social Web
April 3, 2019
By Luke Munn “From where did you receive/research/develop your beliefs? The Internet, of course.” ~ Brenton Tarrant On Friday, March 15th 2019, at 1:40pm, Brenton Tarrant walked into the first of two mosques in central Christchurch and began shooting indiscriminately, leading to the deaths of 50 people. Already there has been speculation about what drove ...
Blog
Philippines: The Black Flag Flies on Facebook
February 27, 2019
By Nathan Shea The first news that militants had taken to the streets of the Islamic City of Marawi on May 23, 2017, came from Facebook. Pictures of masked men carrying assault rifles and waving the black flag of the Islamic State were swirling across social media well before Philippine and international news channels picked ...