The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report to Congress warning about using artificial intelligence (AI) to combat online harms, which include fraud, impersonation scams, fake reviews and accounts, bots, media manipulation, illegal drug sales and other illegal activities, sexual exploitation, hate crimes, harassment and cyberstalking, and misinformation campaigns aimed...
In a recent report published by the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, researchers investigate how racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists are using new technologies in comparison with the Islamic State. Titled, Learning from Foes: How Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists Embrace and Mimic Islamic State’s Use of Emerging...
Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET) has released Offline Versus Online Radicalisation: Which is the Bigger Threat? Tracing Outcomes of 439 Jihadist Terrorists Between 2014–2021 in 8 Western Countries. Social media and online platforms have made terrorist-group materials increasingly accessible. Governments and the general public worldwide are continuously more...
The U.S. Capitol Police is responsible for protecting the members of Congress, as well as all staff, facilities, and visitors. However, on January 6, 2021, thousands of protestors surrounded the U.S. Capitol, where they attacked and injured several law enforcement officers and eventually breached the building. In light of those...
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland has recently released Radicalization in the Ranks: An Assessment of the Scope and Nature of Criminal Extremism in the United States Military, a report examining criminal extremism amongst active and retired U.S....
“Assessing Misogyny as a ‘Gateway Drug’ into Violent Extremism,” by Maddie Cannon, addresses the role gender plays in violent-extremism. The author cites several research-based sources to draw a connection between misogyny and far-right extremism, using the term “gateway drug” as a metaphor for this process. Cannon first cites a report...
In Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) offers a comprehensive examination of how TikTok content creators exploit the platform’s unique features in order to spread messages of hate. The report analyzed a sample of 1,030 TikTok videos identified as promoting...
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has launched a new project that will study the links between far-right extremism and online gaming. Called the Gaming and Extremism series, the goal of the project is to understand the “role online gaming plays in the strategy of far-right extremists” through a series...
The “Boogaloo Bois/Boys” are a group of anti-government extremists, rooted in anti-authority and anti-police ideology. The Boogaloo movement arose in 2019, gaining increased attention in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and for their response to COVID-19 lockdown measures. The...
On January 6, 2021, a pro-Trump rally turned into a violent mob of protesters with the intent of disturbing the United States’ electoral process to formalize Joe Biden as the next president. The four years leading up to this day were a culmination of conspiracy theories, propaganda, and misinformation enabled...
