Welcome to Volume 7 Issue 3 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter.
If you have colleagues or friends who may be interested in the content of our newsletter, or any events or research carried out by VOX-Pol, please forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe via our website. Follow us on Twitter @VOX_Pol for live updates and releases.
Yours Sincerely,
The VOX-Pol Team
NEW ON THE VOX-Pol WEBSITE
After the successful launch of Researcher Resources on the VOX-Pol website in May 2020, we are pleased to add a new section, Jobs, Fellowships and Internships. Information on available positions will be added as they appear. If you have a position in the area of online extremism and terrorism research, analysis, or related that you’d like to promote, send it to info@voxpol.eu.
FEATURED VOX-Pol PUBLICATIONS
VOX-Pol Fellow Zoey Reeve published her work with the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism in July 2020. Her article Repeated and Extensive Exposure to Online Terrorist Content: Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit Perceived Stresses and Strategies was accompanied by a VOX-Pol blog post, which can be read HERE.
VOX-Pol’s Bharath Ganesh and Caterina Froio’s article A “Europe des Nations”: Far Right Imaginative Geographies and the Politicization of Cultural Crisis on Twitter in Western Europe appeared in the Journal of European Integration in August 2020. The open-access article features in a special issue of the journal focused on ‘The Politicisation of Permanent Crisis in Europe.’
Ryan Scrivens, Tiana Gaudette and Vivek Venkatesh published their work with former right-wing extremists in Terrorism and Political Violence in July 2020. The article, The Role of the Internet in Facilitating Violent Extremism: Insights from Former Right-Wing Extremists, was summarised in two-parts for the VOX-Pol Blog: part one and part two.
MOST-READ VOX-Pol BLOG POSTS OF THE YEAR
The VOX-Pol Blog posts weekly on Wednesdays and takes a break every August. Instead of posting in August, we like to highlight the most-read blog posts of the previous year.
Fifty-one posts were published between September 2019 and July 2020, some published simultaneously in multiple languages. Forty-six were in English, two in German, two French, and one Spanish. We are pleased to report a big increase in readership: the top two most-read were VOX-Pol’s highest-read blog posts of all time and overall views have increased 11% on the previous year. The Top 3 most read posts of the year were, in reverse order:
3. Using Twitter as a Data Source: An Overview of Social Media Research Tools
Wasim Ahmed, Lecturer in Digital Business and a social media researcher, built upon his previous work to provide an up-to-date collection of both methods and tools for social scientists.
2. Violent Misogyny, Mass Murder and Suicide: It’s Time to Save Incels from Themselves
The year’s second most-read blog post is a sensitive analysis of incel culture from MoonshotCVE.
1. Is ISIS Dead or Alive?
Moign Khawaja’s analysis of ISIS activities is the highest read blog post of the year, and VOX-Pol’s most read blog post of all time. The article, originally posted on RTÉ Brainstorm, analyses the so-called Islamic State’s online, offline and possible future activities.
Check out the Top 5 HERE.
IN THE MEDIA
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- Donald Trump is Inciting Violence, VOX, 1 September 2020.
- The Anatomy of a City with a Hate Problem, Xtra Magazine, 10 August 2020.
- Reddit has Banned r/The_Donald. Who it Bans Next Matters More, WIRED, 2 July 2020.
- Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests, The New York Times, 11 June 2020.