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By Colin Klein, Adam Dunn, Peter Clutton Why do people believe conspiracy theories? Is it because of who they are, what they’ve encountered, or a combination of both? The answer is important. Belief in conspiracy theories helps fuel climate change denial, anti-vaccination stances, racism, and distrust of the media and science. In a paper published ...

By Prof. Maura Conway My 2016 paper ‘Determining the Role of the Internet in Violent Extremism and Terrorism,’ put forward six suggestions for progressing research in our field. These suggestions, briefly, related to (1) widening the range of types of violent online extremism being studied beyond violent jihadis; (2) engaging in more comparative research, not ...

By Shahed Warreth Introduction While extremist groups are well financed, little research has been carried out on how they the internet to use crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies. To date, research into their online activities has focused predominantly on their propaganda and recruiting on social media. However, there have been several instances in which the far right ...

By Reem Ahmed and Daniela Pisoiu Social media is attractive to the far right in the same way as it is to other extremist groups. It offers a more direct, personal communication channel with potential audiences (Ernst et al. 2017: 1357). Moreover, in the absence of traditional media ‘gatekeepers’, the far right are able to ...

Par Laurence Bindner et Raphael Gluck, co-fondateurs de JOS Project Au cours de l’année 2018, alors que Daech recule de plus en plus sur le terrain, l’Etat islamique (EI) résiste sur un autre front, celui du djihad médiatique. Les nouvelles productions, en nombre certes réduit, continuent d’être diffusées sur le web, tandis que les archives ...

By Jillian C. York and Eliot Harmon Internet Companies Must Adopt Consistent Rules and Transparent Moderation Practices Big online platforms tend to brag about their ability to filter out violent and extremist content at scale, but those same platforms refuse to provide even basic information about the substance of those removals. How do these platforms ...

Summary Since the Christchurch attack great efforts have been made to coordinate tech sector response to content incidents however more work is required to coordinate behaviour across mainstream media, academia, government, and the broader tech industry Both smaller platforms and larger platforms were prompt in dealing with the proliferation of the video – it was only circulated ...

By Wasim Ahmed This post builds upon the 2015, and 2017 editions of this post, captures key trends and events which are shaping social media research for social scientists and provides a collection of research methods and tools for the analysis of social media data. Since the 2017 edition of this blog post, I have ...

Incels are a danger to society and to themselves. Technology has made the problem worse, but it can also help fix it. Involuntary celibates, or incels, believe that a socio-genetic conspiracy theory is preventing them from having sexual relationships with women. Denied their right to sex because society has deemed them unworthy, some of their ...

By Linda Schlegel The rise of social media usage as an everyday activity for millions of citizens has been accompanied by a discussion about the dangers of this development. Echo chambers or “filter bubbles” are often mentioned in this regard.[1] Both concepts refer to the possibility that social media users only engage with content that ...