By Tom Ascott Everyone has seen a meme, whether they know it or not. They’re everywhere on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The most popular ones make it off the Internet and show up in newspapers, television shows or films. You’ve almost certainly seen Pepe the Frog, and if you haven’t seen the classic ‘Woman yelling…
far-right
By Dr. Joe Burton It didn’t take long for a terrorist to show how hard it is to prevent violent extremist content being shared online. Within six months of the attacks at two Christchurch mosques on March 15 last year, which were live streamed on Facebook, a far-right terrorist’s attack at a German synagogue was…
By Dr. William Allchorn In late January this year, the outgoing director general of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, Sir Andrew Parker, suggested that technology was one of the biggest challenges facing the UK’s Security Services. Sir Andrew said he was particularly interested in artificial intelligence “because of our need to be able to make sense of…
By Nery Ramati The need to develop legal tools in order to cope with the dangers of online extremism and terrorism has been an issue that has kept legislators, government officials, and security forces around the globe very busy in recent years. In liberal democracies, the legal challenges are intensified due to the obvious dangers…
By Nery Ramati The need to develop legal tools in order to cope with the dangers of online extremism and terrorism has been an issue that has kept legislators, government officials, and security forces around the globe very busy in recent years. In liberal democracies, the legal challenges are intensified due to the obvious dangers…
By Ryan Scrivens and Amarnath Amarasingam Following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Canadian right-wing extremist (RWE) groups tried desperately to band together, planning a number of rallies and events in some of the nation’s most urban cities to show support for the extreme right in general and to promote racist, anti-immigration sentiment…
By Paul Gill Reviews of the terrorism research literature regularly highlight the paucity of original data that inform analyses (Schmid and Jongman 1988; Silke 2001, 2004). In his most recent review of the literature, Silke (2013) noted: “[O]ne feels that a great deal more needs to be done before research is consistently building on past…
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…
Why global coding collaboration benefits everyone – including terrorists and violent extremists. Summary Much of the software that powers the internet and decentralised platforms currently depends on software that was developed under the “open-source model” – not to be confused with Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) – in which the source code is available to the general public for use or…
