Welcome to Volume 11, Issue 11 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter.
UPCOMING EVENT
VOX-Pol partner project Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) invites you to their final online webinar: Innovations & Insights. This two-hour webinar highlights the insights, lessons, and outputs developed during the TATE project. It will take place on Monday 9 December 2024 at 09:00 GMT | 10:00 CET.
Join TATE for the final project event to hear from experts across Europe as they share strategies for effectively addressing terrorist content online. Read more and register here.
In other news from the TATE project, Prof Stuart Macdonald and Dr Miraji Mohamed authored a policy brief titled ‘The challenges that small and micro HSPs face in implementing the TCO Regulation‘, published in October 2024. The report was based on interviews with small and micro Hosting Service Providers (HSPs) about their experiences implementing the EU’s Terrorist Content Online Regulation.
Alongside the policy brief, they recorded an episode of the Tech Terror Takedown Podcast, ‘Small Platforms in the Spotlight’ where they discussed the unique challenges these smaller platforms face, including the one-hour removal rule, resource limitations, and legal knowledge gaps. Listen to it here.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS AND APPEARANCES
VOX-Pol Members James Fitzgerald, Ayse D. Lokmanoglu, Debora Salles, and Rose Marie Santini published the article ‘Heaven Holds a Place for Those who Pray’: Instrumentalizing religion and disinformation the 2022 Brazilian and 2023 Turkish presidential campaigns in The International Journal of Press/Politics. It will be open access soon.
VOX-Pol Member Elizabeth Pearson appeared on the podcast, Stage Talks with Bellingcat in October 2024. The episode ‘Researching Online Extremism and Terrorism‘ is available online. Dr Pearson and host, Merel Zoet, discussed the safety and wellbeing of researchers who study online extremism and terrorism. Dr Pearson described the findings and recommendations of the REASSURE report, and took questions from the Bellingcat audience, giving practical advice on minimising harms for researchers.
10 YEARS OF THE VOX-Pol BLOG
The VOX-Pol Blog has been running for ten years this month and currently contains nearly 500 posts. On it you’ll find book reviews, research article summaries, reflection pieces, cross-posts, and translations. Our look back at ten years of the Blog can be read here.
Last month’s Blog posts included:
- Beyond Western Misogyny: A growing incel movement in Turkey?, 6 November 2024, by Kamil Yilmaz and Joe Whittaker.
- The Rise and Fall of the Male State Movement, 30 October 2024, by Anna Kruglova.
- Threats to Democracies: A view from Australia, 23 October 2024, by Michele Grossman.
- Some online conspiracy-spreaders don’t even believe the lies they’re spewing, 16 October 2024 by H. Colleen Sinclair.
- Nazis at the salad bar: The National Workers’ Alliance and mixed, unclear, and unstable ideology, 9 October 2024, by Gerard Gill.
All VOX-Pol Blog posts have now been added to the VOX-Pol Online Library, making it quick and easy to search the Blog archives. Using the Online Library Advanced Search function, you can select ‘VOX-Pol Blog’ under publication type. You can add authors, tags, year(s), keyword, etc. to your search to retrieve relevant blog posts.
IN THE MEDIA
A spotlight on recent news items featuring VOX-Pol Members and their research:
- What is accelerationism, the White supremacist ideology promoting power station attacks, CNN, 8 November 2024.
- RCMP plans to go undercover online to trap violent extremists, CBC News, 3 November 2024.
- The Long History of Violent Extremism, The MIT Press Reader, 31 October 2024.