Most analyses of far-right communication on social media focus on one specific platform, while findings are generalized. In this study, I argue that the far right’s use of social media depends on technology affordances – the linkage between platform design and usage – and, thus, might not always be generalizable….

Irrespective of discipline, the publication of null or non-significant findings is rare in the social sciences. For burgeoning fields like terrorism research, this is particularly problematic. As well as increasing the likelihood of Type II errors, the selective reporting of significant findings ultimately impedes progression, hindering comprehensive syntheses of evidence…

This pilot study examines the correlation of online and on-the-ground behaviours of three lone-actor terrorists prior to their intended and planned attacks on soft targets in North America and Europe: the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, the Buffalo supermarket shooter and the Bratislava bar shooter. The activities were examined with the definition…

The threat of radicalization and extremism continues to jeopardize global security, and the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges. To address these evolving issues, Hedayah’s International Research Conference, held in May 2022 in Granada, Spain, brought together academics and practitioners. This conference featured a compilation of research essays covering various…

This article explores how the threat of terrorism has been addressed at the policy level by offering a fine-grained analysis of a specific preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) project implemented in Mali between 2018 and 2021 by a composite mix of international and national practitioners. Despite the current and…

There has been a rise in the number of terrorist incidents in which social media use has been implicated in the planning and execution of the attack. Efforts to identify online risk signals of terrorist offending is challenging due to the existence of the specificity problem– that while many people…

This is a translation of a conference report first published in German on 22 August 2022 under the title “Im toten Winkel – Rechtsextreme Radikalisierung im Netz”, summarizing the discussions and findings of the research conference held in Berlin in October 2022 as part of the project “Countering radicalisation in right-wing extremist online…

The majority of European citizens – often referred to as ‘foreign fighters’ – that have returned to European soil have predominantly been prosecuted for terrorist offences. In recent years several European countries have been prosecuting alleged terrorists cumulatively for both terrorist offences and core international crimes. This paper explores which…

This study explores the motivational drivers of violent extremism by examining references to motivational goals—values—in texts written by lone offenders. We present a new database of manifestos written by lone offenders (N = 103), the Extremist Manifesto Database (EMD). We apply a dictionary approach to examine references to values in this…

This article explores what it is to explain extremism. Rather than providing yet another explanation of extremism, it takes a bird’s eye point of view at existing explanations of extremism. What is it that scholars are doing in seeking explanations of extremism? This article answers this question by considering four issues. First, exactly what is the…

Digital media platforms have been implicated in the recent rise of far-right extremism. This study proposes that these platforms afford emotional processes that lie at the core of far-right movements. Drawing on Randall Collins’ interactional framework and the literature on cultural trauma, we investigate the emotional processes triggered by traumatic…

In recent years, the prevalence of hate speech has become an increasing concern across European societies because of its damaging effect on the very foundation of society and trust between communities. Experts and practitioners have offered a variety of hate speech definitions. For the purpose of this paper, we will…