Blog
Book Review: Jihadi Audiovisuality and Its Entanglements
May 5, 2021
Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Eurasia Review A new book looks at the use of audiovisual media by jihadi groups and their supporters as well as at how these contributions are being countered Recent attacks by jihadists in Kabul, Dresden, Paris, and Vienna have brought the problem of Islamist terror back into ...
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Comparing the Online Posting Behaviors of Violent and Non-Violent Right-Wing Extremists
April 28, 2021
This article summarises a recent study published in Terrorism and Political Violence. By Ryan Scrivens, Thomas W. Wojciechowski, Joshua D. Freilich, Steven M. Chermak, and Richard Frank Despite the ongoing need for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to identify and assess the online activities of violent extremists prior to their engagement in violence offline, little is ...
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Automation in Online Content Moderation: In Search of Lost Legitimacy and the Risks of Censorship
April 21, 2021
Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Charis Papaevangelou, Jiahong Huang, Lucia Mesquita, and Sara Creta At a recent workshop, JOLT Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) worked in multi-disciplinary teams to develop ideas for research projects that address a major issue surrounding media and technology. As the European Commission prepares to announce its much-anticipated ...
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How Ireland Can Stop the Rise of the Far-right
April 14, 2021
Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Ross Frenett We all watched in horror as rioters inspired by fringe far-right conspiracy theories occupied the US Capitol building in January. The societal radicalisation on full display has caused many to ask what we in Ireland can do to push back against the extremists in ...
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(Young) Women’s Usage of Social Media and Lessons for Preventing Violent Extremism
April 7, 2021
Want to submit a blog post? Click here. This Blog post summarises a conclusion paper from the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network.  By Jordy Krasenberg and Julia Handle  The perspective on the role of (young) women in extremism has changed over the last years towards better understanding of how women radicalise, how they are recruited, and ...
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Meet BreadTube, the YouTube Activists Trying to Beat the Far-right at Their Own Game
March 31, 2021
Want to submit a blog post? Click here. By Alexander Mitchell Lee YouTube has gained a reputation for facilitating far-right radicalisation and spreading antisocial ideas. However, in an interesting twist, the same subversive, comedic, satiric and ironic tactics used by far-right internet figures are now being countered by a group of leftwing YouTubers known as “BreadTube”. By making videos ...
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‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part IV: Predicting Extremist Behaviour
March 24, 2021
This is the fourth and final in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE the second is HERE the third is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The previous cluster of methods looked at in the blog post series included methods developed to extrapolate insight from the content produced online and on social ...
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‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part III: Analysing Extremist Content
March 17, 2021
This is the third in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE and the second is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The previous blog posts looked at the costs and benefits of using network analysis to identify extremist networks. It suggested that one challenge in such network analysis-based research approaches is ...
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‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part II: Identifying Extremist Networks
March 10, 2021
This is the second in a series of four original Blog posts; the first is HERE. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen The first blog post in this series explored how researchers interested in computational methods can assess the trade-off between the validity of the methods used and the potentially adverse social costs of using them in ...
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‘Terrorism Informatics’ Part I: A Framework for Researchers
March 3, 2021
This series of four blog posts builds on discussions had during the ‘Inside the Black Box of “Terrorism Informatics”: A Cost-benefit Analysis of Using Computational Techniques in Violent Online Political Extremism Research’ workshop organised by VOX-Pol in 2018. [Ed.] By Matti Pohjonen One of the most pressing challenges in research on violent online extremism is ...