VOX-Pol attended the annual Society for Terrorism Research 13th International Conference, which took place at the University of Oslo on 20 and 21 June. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘The data revolution in terrorism research: implications for theory and practice’, and featured two keynotes, two roundtables and twenty-nine panels.
VOX-Pol sponsored a roundtable on online data at the conference, featuring:
- Maura Conway (DCU, VOX-Pol Coordinator): Terrorism and social media research: Ethics issues;
- J.M. Berger (Swansea, VOX-Pol): Bringing together network analysis and content analysis;
- Sam Jackson (SUNY Albany): The data is big, but is it good?;
- Vidhya Ramalingam (Moonshot CVE): Tools for identifying extremist content online.
The participants in this roundtable presented their thoughts and experiences of working with internet-based data to research terrorism and extremism. The discussion focused on new challenges and opportunities for researchers in this area.
After the conference, attendees were invited to Utøya, the main site of the terrorist attacks in Oslo on 22 July, 2011. The visit included presentations from survivors, police officers, and researchers on the 22 July attack.
