Blog

By Wyn Brodersen and Maik Fielitz Antisemitic content on TikTok rarely announces itself. It arrives as a number, an emoji, a joke about a hollow earth — and that is exactly what makes it spread. In February 2026, a local politician for Germany’s far-right AfD shared a video on Instagram. Its text asked whether “an ...

By J.M. Berger This article is an adapted and lightly edited excerpt from Online Extremism, a chapter in the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Online Violent Extremism. While the Internet can be and is used as a simple broadcasting tool for spreading ideas and ideologies to new audiences, its most powerful innovation was participation. Unlike radio ...

Timothy Koskie, University of Sydney Popular encrypted messaging app Telegram failed to detect and remove pro-terrorist and extremist material, including videos of executions and attacks, a new lawsuit launched by Australia’s online watchdog alleges. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, announced in Sydney on Thursday morning she was taking legal action against Telegram in the ...

By Sören Henrich, Jeremiah Perez-Torres, Séan Looney, and Brigitte Naderer At this year’s Terrorism and Social Media (TASM) Conference, our goal was to hear from as many different voices in the field as possible as part of launching our project, “Crisis, Connectivity, and Meaning: Exploring Youth Extremism in the Digital Age”, funded by the Critical ...

Marten Risius, The University of Queensland and Christopher David, Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences Eighty-one years after Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker, a viral video on TikTok shows an AI-generated vision of the Nazi dictator standing in Antarctica, shoulders broad and face smiling, sipping a White Monster Energy drink ...

By Moses Ameh The public comment on violence in Nigeria has been observed to change from a normal state to a polarized virtual environment within a short time on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and WhatsApp. These exchanges tend to be sparked by a statement or interpretation of insecurity-related incidents, and quickly ...

By Sarah Stevenson & Dr Steven Barracosa At risk and radicalised youth represent one of the most complex and consequential challenges facing contemporary CVE practice given the intersection of adolescent vulnerability, search for belonging, identity formation and exposure to extreme material and polarising online environments. The role and impact of family systems and dynamics have ...

Anat Lior, Drexel University On Feb. 10, 2026, an 18-year-old woman, Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed eight people and herself in a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. OpenAI had previously flagged her ChatGPT conversations as having a disturbing fascination with extreme violence, and suspended her account, but reportedly the company did not notify law ...

By Mischa Gerrard When footage of a knife attack in north Belfast began circulating online, the incident quickly escaped the confines of the street on which it had occurred. Within hours, it was being shared and debated across X, amplified by activists, influencers, and political commentators both within and beyond Northern Ireland. Demonstrations were organised, ...

By Krista Fisher, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Emily Lewis, Ruben Benakovic, and Zac Seidler Interest in the manosphere has recently surged yet again, with the recent Louis Theroux documentary catapulting the term “manosphere” back to the forefront of our cultural psyche. The term has become a catchall for the most inflammatory content and communities in young men’s ...