Week in Review for Violent Extremism and Terrorism Analysis: 2023-04-03
Happy Wednesday everyone, here is a recap from the field of violent extremism and terrorism analysis.
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1) Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack
In a recent blog post the ADL Center on Extremism explores how extremists and conspiracy theorists are profiting from spreading hate speech and false information on Substack
2) Automating Terror: The Role and Impact of Telegram Bots in the Islamic State’s Online Ecosystem
In February 2023, Abdullah Alrhmoun ,Charlie Winter & János Kertész published an article exploring the role of Telegram Bots in the ISIS ecosystem
In this article, we use network science to explore the topology of the Islamic State’s “terrorist bot” network on the online social media platform Telegram, empirically identifying its connections to the Islamic State supporter-run groups and channels that operate across the platform, with which these bots form bipartite structures. As part of this, we examine the diverse activities of the bots to determine the extent to which they operate in synchrony with one another as well as explore their impacts. We show that these bots are mainly clustered around two communities of Islamic State supporters, or “munasirun,” with one community focusing on facilitating discussion and exchange, and the other one augmenting content distribution efforts. Operating as such, this network of bots is used to lubricate and augment the Islamic State’s influence activities, including facilitating content amplification and community cultivation efforts, and connecting people with the movement based on common behaviors, shared interests, and/or ideological proximity while minimizing risk for the broader organization.
This week the published a summary of their finding in on GNET for a quick read about their findings.
3) Terrorwave: The Aesthetics of Violence and Terrorist Imagery in Militant Accelerationist Subcultures
Joshua Molloy in his GNET Insight explores the importance of the Terror wave aesthetics which plays a major role in its strategy of glorifying militancy and terrorism. Sharp and visually appealing aesthetics define the Terrorgram brand and build subcultural cohesion. Their in-group formation is developed through the fetishisation of the terrorist image in propaganda and terrorwave is a visual style in which the aesthetics of the militant are worshipped.
4) From Blaming China to Attacking Domestic Elites: The Evolution of Hate Speech in a Telegram Channel during the COVID-19 Pandemic
In this piece, the authors explore how hate speech targeted various groups with different intensities at different points in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, using the largest Italian telegram conspiracy channel as a case study.
Prior research has found that the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a wave of online hate speech against targets such as Asian and Jewish minorities, as well as an increase in conspiracy theories circulating online. We contribute to this growing body of research with new evidence from a mixed-methods study of the largest and most active Italian conspiracy Telegram channels, La Cruna dell’Ago. We combine digital ethnography with automated language analysis methods to study all messages written in the La Cruna dell’Ago Telegram channel from its inception on February 7, 2020, until December 31, 2020. We assessed whether the language changed across different periods of the country-specific responses to the virus: (1) March 9, 2020 (the beginning of the first lockdown); (2) May 19, 2020 (the reopening for the summer months); (3) November 6, 2020 (the beginning of the second lockdown). The study period covers the first year of the pandemic in Italy: the first Western country to experience a significant number of infections in early 2020 immediately after the virus was detected in Wuhan.
5) When the Far Right Makes the News: Protest Characteristics and Media Coverage of Far-Right Mobilization in Europe
When do the media cover far-right protests? News coverage matters for the entrenchment of the far right in contemporary democracies, but little comparative research has looked at what drives news attention to far-right mobilization. We apply a classic input–output process model of news selection bias to test the hypothesis that the visibility of far-right protests events depends on the characteristics of protest initiators, type of action, and reactions. We appraise this via logistic regressions on an original dataset of 5972 protest events retrieved from online press releases by far-right groups (input) and national quality newspapers (output) in 11 European countries (2008–2018). The analysis confirms that news media are particularly responsive to contentious action, protest around migration issues, and action–reaction chains between political opponents. Our findings shed light on the role of news organizations in the success of the far-right and on the pathways by which these movements shape public agendas.
6) Investigating Digital Threats: Disinformation
This post is the first in a series of chapters taken from GIJN’s upcoming Reporter’s Guide to Investigating Digital Threats. The guide will be released in full this September at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference. The tools outlined in this piece by Jane Lytvynenko are meant as aids for uncovering info & taking a closer look at data. They can't replace the hard work of traditional journalism, nor are they intended to; however, they do provide an important foundation for those working in this space.
7) ISD published an explainer for the Order of the Nine Angles
This document provides an overview of The Order of Nine Angles and is one in a series of extremism briefing notes produced by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) out of a long-running partnership with Microsoft*. The purpose of these documents is to provide entry-level context and background about various extremist and conspiratorial narratives and movements. These are not intended as comprehensive deep-dives. Rather, they present key concepts, (conspiracy) theories, terminology and imagery deployed by the given movements or narratives. Further reading recommendations are provided at the end of each document, should readers want to learn more.
The Order of Nine Angles (O9A) is a decentralized, satanic, neo-Nazi organization. O9A adherents believe Western civilization’s Judeo-Christian heritage corrupts modern society and seek to overthrow and replace the current order with a new imperial order based on Fascism, Social Darwinism and Satanism. O9A ideology has spread and become both increasingly influential and divisive among accelerationist neo-Nazi groups in recent years.
8) TCAP Insights: Understanding Terrorist Exploitation Online by Tech Platform Size
This analysis is based on data relating to terrorist content online collected by the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) between 25 November 2020 and 19 January 2023. This data set includes 39,964 URLs of terrorist content submitted to the TCAP (TCAP Submissions), including 22,615 of those sent as alerts to 95 different tech companies (TCAP Alerts). This is official terrorist content produced by the 37 different terrorist entities alerted by the TCAP, as defined by our Inclusion Policy.
Key insights:
- Small and medium-sized tech platforms, when measured by user base, were the most highly exploited tech platform sizes based on volume of content identified on their platforms. Smaller platforms also averaged a lower remove rate of alerted terrorist content, than large and medium-sized platforms.
- Earlier stage tech platforms, those with between 0-50 employees, averaged a higher volume of terrorist content on their platforms than companies with more than 50 employees (Mid and Enterprise). These earlier stage platforms also averaged a lower removal rate of alerted terrorist content.
- Given smaller platforms, when considering both user base and resources, average lower removal rates of terrorist content, further engagement and support should be targeted towards smaller platforms.
9) Call for Papers – Journal for Deradicalization Summer Issue No.35 – 2023
We invite academics, practitioners, and policy makers to submit articles for the next Issue (No. 35 Summer 2023) of the Journal for Deradicalization to be published June 30, 2023. Article types may include research papers, working papers, policy recommendations, conference reports, field experiences, interviews, book reviews and program introductions within the topic of radicalization and deradicalization studies of all radical milieus and ideologies. You may use updated versions of previously published or unpublished work. However, original work will be preferred. The length of the contributions should be between 5.000 (for policy papers, field experiences, program introductions, book reviews) and 10.000 (research papers, working papers, interviews) words. Languages accepted are English and German.
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