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Researching the Evolving Online Ecosystem: Telegram, Discord and Odysee

Henry Tuck, Jakob Guhl, Julia Smirnova, Lea Gerster, Oliver Marsh

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2023), 59 pp.

"Harmful actors use an ever-expanding range of digital spaces to spread harmful ideologies and undermine human rights and democracy online. Understanding their evolving ideas, online networks and activities is critical to the development of a more comprehensive evidence base to inform effective and ... more

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Narrative über den Krieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine (NUK)

Jakob Guhl, Julia Smirnova

Bonn; Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb); Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2023), 30 pp.

"Zwischen dem 19.09.2022 und 18.09.2023 wurde das Projekt „Narrative über den Krieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine“ (NUK, im Folgenden NUK) vom Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD Germany) im Auftrag der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb umgesetzt. Ziel des Projekts war es, Desinformati ... more

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Researching the Evolving Online Ecosystem: Barriers, Methods and Future Challenges

Jakob Guhl, Oliver Marsh, Henry Tuck

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2022), 35 pp.

"This report outlines the findings from the initial scoping phase of a project supported by a grant from Omidyar Network and launched by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and CASM Technology to identify online spaces used by extremist, hate and disinformation actors and communities as they ... more

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A Taxonomy for the Classification of Post-Organisational Violent Extremist & Terrorist Content

Jacob Davey, Comerford Milo, Jakob Guhl et al.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 26 pp.

"Across the case studies we identified three broad categories for the classification of content, which will be unpacked in greater detail in the following section: 1. Instructional material which contains guidance on operational aspects of terrorist and violent extremist activity. This includes guid ... more

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Loving Hate: Anti-Muslim Extremism, Radical Islamism and the Spiral of Polarization

Maik Fielitz, Julia Ebner, Jakob Guhl, Matthias Quent

Jena (DE); London; Berlin: Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ); Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2018), 75 pp.

"This report focuses on the interactional dynamics between anti-Muslim extremists and radical Islamists in Germany and beyond. It reveals ideological underpinnings, approaches to mobilization and communication patterns, which all prove to be analogous on both sides, and it places emphasis on the rec ... iprocity of hate that may serve to intensify processes of individual and group radicalization. Our study presents the first systematic analysis of the interplay between both forms of extremism that plays out on different places on the Internet. It provides direct evidence showing that Islamist and far-right movements converge at different levels and mutually amplify one another. The analysis focuses on measuring the online interaction between extremist content, individuals and events. Overall, over 10,000 Islamist and far-right Facebook posts and over one million German anti-Muslim tweets between 1 January 2013 and 30 November 2017 were analyzed for this study. Additionally, we conducted three months of ethnographic research into encrypted pro-IS and pro-Al-Qaeda groups on Telegram as well as into far-right chat groups. Key Findings Radical Islamism and anti-Muslim racism, which manifest themselves in the form of far-right extremism and right-wing populism exhibit a symbiotic relationship. In the context of glocal interaction patterns, the far right operates as a national sphere of resonance for international jihadism. Both negate and dismantle basic democratic values such as the inviolability of human dignity and religious freedom. What’s more, racism against Muslims paves the way for radicalization through Islamic fundamentalists. We identified three key patterns that reveal common worldviews and argumentative resemblance: First, the demonization of enemies based on a clear distinction between friend and foe. Second, the victimization of one’s own group as both sides take advantage of the alleged discrimination of their own group and the constructed dominance of the other. Third, conspiracy, which is the basic explanation provided for why the respective milieus do not share their exclusionary claim to truth. The alleged systematic blindness caused by the Jews or fake news are needed to balance the dissonance between claims and reality as well as to contribute to demonizing other groups." (Executive summary) more