VOX-Pol Newsletter 12(5) May 2025

Posted on May 13, 2025 (May 12, 2025)

Welcome to Volume 12, Issue 5 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter.

NEW PUBLICATION

VOX-Pol is pleased to announce a new report in its publication series: ‘Right- and left-wing violent extremist abuse of digital technologies in South America, Africa and Asia‘. This report, jointly published by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and VOX-Pol, investigates the underexplored phenomenon of right- and left-wing violent extremist groups in the Global South and their abuse of digital technologies. As technology evolves at an unprecedented pace, violent extremist actors increasingly exploit digital platforms, posing complex and multifaceted threats to national and global security.

The report highlights how violent extremists are leveraging digital technologies for external and internal messaging, financing, and even offensive cyber operations. These threats range from the use of alternative or fringe social media, decentralised web platforms, gaming spaces, and live-streaming technologies, to more sophisticated operations such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure.

While significant research has been conducted on groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) or Al-Qaida, there has been comparatively little attention to right- and left-wing violent extremist activity in regions such as South America, Africa and Asia. This report seeks to fill that gap, analysing the online activities, narratives, and potential cyber capabilities of these actors.

The report begins with an outline of the research methodology, which combined a literature review, expert interviews, and open-source investigations. This approach ensured a comprehensive understanding of the digital behaviour of right- and left-wing violent extremist movements across South America, Africa and Asia.

The main body of the report explores how violent extremists abuse digital technologies in four key areas:

1. External messaging, including propaganda dissemination and radicalisation efforts;

2. Internal messaging, focused on group cohesion and coordination of activities or attacks;

3. Financing, particularly the use of online fundraising and cryptocurrencies;

4. Offensive cyber capabilities, such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, website defacements, and cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure.

To illustrate these dynamics, the report presents a series of regional case studies, shedding light on both ideological diversity and geographic spread. The findings of the case studies suggest that international technology companies are not adequately fulfilling their content moderation policies as consistently in South America, Africa and Asia as in other countries in Europe, North America and Australasia. The lack of cultural understanding and language-related knowledge, as well as a splintered regulatory landscape, are some of the challenges faced by technology companies and other relevant stakeholders discussed in the report. 

In its conclusion, the report emphasises the interconnected nature of the online and offline activities of violent extremist groups, and their ability to exploit apparent gaps in technology responses maintaining a relatively open presence on mainstream platforms.

The final section offers targeted recommendations for various stakeholders:

  • Member States are encouraged to enhance their investigative skills of the dark web and encrypted communication platforms, and strengthen their cyber resilience capacities;
  • Researchers are called upon to fill knowledge gaps and explore manifestations of right- and left-wing violent extremism in the Global South;
  • Technology companies are encouraged to develop approaches and solutions complementary to content removal, and strengthen cross-platform collaboration;
  • International inter-governmental organisations are advised to address definitions of contentious issues like violent extremism and step up their responsibilities to maintain international peace in the realm of cyberspace. 

Read the report here.

All VOX-Pol publications are available in full and for free on our Publications page. Some reports are also available in hard copy. Email info@voxpol.eu with your address to receive your report(s).

A new publication from VOX-Pol Member Ryan Scrivens and team, ‘Exploring the Evolution of Posting Behavior and Language Use in a Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremist Forum’ was recently published in the journal, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. The article is open access and you can read it here.

A summary of the paper was also published on the VOX-Pol Blog.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Machine Against the Rage: A Journal for Digital Conflict Research

Machine Against the Rage (MATR) is an online journal from Germany dedicated to exploring the digital dimensions of radicalisation and polarisation. It focuses in particular on phenomena commonly discussed under the terms hate and disinformation—concepts we regard as contested and therefore their application as a subject of digital conflicts itself. For this reason, MATR also stands for critical perspectives on (internet) policies addressing hate and disinformation.

MATR welcomes contributions that operate at the intersection of data science, discursive network analysis, and (critical) social analysis. While they primarily publish in German, they will also feature English-language contributions. On their blog (currently under construction) they will present translations of notable international research to a German-speaking audience, particularly for media, politics, and civil society.

MATR is produced by the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society, a partner organisation of VOX-Pol. If VOX-Pol members are interested in contributing, please contact them at: machine-vs-rage@idz-jena.de. For more information, click here.

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