VOX-Pol Newsletter 2(1) February 2015

Welcome to Vol. 2, Iss. 1 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter.

Year 1 of VOX-Pol was a resounding success. In the 12 months to December 2014, we hosted three events to which we welcomed 163 attendees from 24 countries (12 EU Member States and 12 non-EU countries).

Our website has gathered 20,000 page-views by 5,000 visitors from 117 countries, aided by the launch of the VOX-Pol Blog, contributions to which are welcomed.

By year end this Newsletter had nearly 600 subscribers and we were well on our way to our 500^th Twitter follower.

2015 has gotten off to an encouraging start also. We hosted a successful January workshop in Brussels and look forward to our next event in Budapest in early March; details of both workshops are below.

A series of free-to-access publications arising from our research and activities will begin to appear on our website shortly, along with information regarding forthcoming events.

We want to thank all those who worked with us in 2014 and invite you to continue to do so in 2015. As before, we welcome any feedback and suggestions you may have.

If you have colleagues or friends who may be interested in the content of this newsletter, please forward it to them and encourage them to subscribe via our website and/or follow us on Twitter @VOX_Pol

Yours sincerely,
The VOX-Pol Team

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Workshop on the Role of Social Media and Internet Companies in Responding to Violent Online Extremism, 5 -6 March 2015, Budapest

On March 5-6 VOX-Pol will convene a workshop at Central European University in Budapest on the role of social media and Internet companies in responding to violent online political extremism and the impacts on freedom of expression. Events in Paris in January 2015, followed by the Joint Statement of EU Ministers for Interior and Justice expressing concern at the ‘increasingly frequent use of the Internet to fuel hatred and violence’, make the forthcoming workshop especially timely.

 

The event has an exciting line-up of speakers including Rebecca MacKinnon, founder of Global Voices Online, who recently testified at the US Senate House Committee on Foreign Affairs on ‘The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda’.

MacKinnon is director of the Ranking Digital Rights project and author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom (2012).

Along with representatives of major social media companies and law enforcement, other speakers will include:

• BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE, DIRECTOR OF THE INTERNET & JURISDICTION PROJECT
• GILL PHILLIPS, DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL LEGAL SERVICES FOR THE GUARDIAN
• ÉVA SIMON, HUNGARIAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
• LUCY PURDON, INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS & BUSINESS
• JIM KILLOCK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF OPEN RIGHTS GROUP
• JOAN BARATA MIR, PRINCIPAL ADVISER TO THE OSCE REPRESENTATIVE ON FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA
• RIKKE FRANK JØRGENSEN, THE DANISH INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

More information about the workshop, its agenda and timetable will appear on the workshop’s event page as they become available. If you have queries about the workshop, email workshop@voxpol.eu

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RECENT EVENTS

Workshop on Ethics and Politics of Online Monitoring of Violent Extremism, 19 – 20 January 2015, Brussels

The second in Vox-Pol’s workshop series, on the ethics and politics of online monitoring of violent extremism, took place in Brussels from 19-20 January. Around thirty experts – from law enforcement and intelligence agencies, governments and parliaments, civil society, and universities – met for two days to discuss the challenges that had dominated the news since the Charlie Hebdo murders the previous week.
 
Short versions of ten papers were presented to stimulate discussion. These ranged from discussion of the problems with the commonly-used term “radicalisation”, to individual cases, such as the Internet usage of Anders Behring Breivik before his atrocities in Norway, and Hamas during the 2008-2009 war in Gaza. They included analysis of the changing uses of technologies for monitoring situations and individuals of concern, and also considered legal protections for human rights at the national, European, and international level. 

An overview of the workshop by its organiser, Prof. Ian Brown (OII), is now available on our blog. A project report on the subject of the workshop will be published in April.

Panel on Monitoring the Net for Violent Extremist Material, CPDP, 21 January 2015, Brussels

The 8^th International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) took place in Brussels from 21-23 January, attracting over 1,000 privacy researchers, regulators, and policymakers. VOX-Pol organised a packed-out panel discussion at the conference. There was standing room only at the panel where four of the workshop speakers brought outcomes of the workshop to a much larger audience.

The panel comprised contributions from Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute, Sadhbh McCarthy, Centre for Irish and European Security, TJ McIntyre, University College Dublin, and Robindra Prabhu, Norwegian Board of Technology. It was chaired by Pete Fussey of the University of Essex and moderated by Maura Conway of Dublin City University.

Here is a full video of the panel, which can also be viewed on VOX-Pol’s YouTube channel: 

Workshop on Behavioural Underpinnings of Violent Online Political Extremism, 2 – 3 December 2014, Berlin

The first in a series of VOX-Pol workshops, exploring ‘The Behavioural Underpinnings of Violent Online Political Extremism’ workshop, was held in Berlin, Germany, on 2 and 3 December 2014. The two-day workshop brought together participants from police, intelligence services, security experts, and academics who discussed how (if at all) individuals convicted of terrorism related offences use the Internet, correlations in their behavioural characteristics, and how those behaviours can be detected, prevented, and disrupted. The research upon which the workshop was based is being undertaken by Dr. Paul Gill and colleagues at University College London and will be published later in the year.

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