Understanding the Salafi Online Ecosystem: A Digital Snapshot
A digital snapshot of the rapidly shifting online Salafi ecosystem across social media and its intersection with Gen-Z identities.
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Theoretical Overview: Gen-Z & The Digital Salafi Ecosystem
This theoretical briefing seeks to contextualise ISD’s research into the online Salafi ecosystem within the key political debates and terminological considerations.
Methodology: Gen-Z & The Digital Salafi Ecosystem
This methodology paper provides an overview of ISD’s research approach for our data-driven snapshot of the Salafi digital landscape.
What’s New (and What’s Not) with News Front
Despite having been banned in 2020, pro-Russian propaganda outlet News Front has been able to return to Facebook for at least a third time without any significant innovation in its tactics or operation. This raises questions about how effectively Facebook enforces its own bans on known bad actors.
Reciprocal Dynamics Between Australia’s Political Fringes on Twitter
For this research, ISD’s digital analysis unit have been monitoring a network of 208 channels distributing white supremacist content on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram. In an analysis of over a million posts, this briefing unpacks how the platform is being used to glorify terrorism, call for violence, spread extremist ideological material and demonise minority groups.
Inspiration and Influence: Discussions of the U.S. Military in Extreme Right-Wing Telegram Channels
This briefing reveals that, while military activity is often framed within the broader context of anti-government and antisemitic ideology, white supremacist groups actively draw inspiration from the military in their preparations for violence.
Policy Paper: Mainstreamed Extremism and the Future of Prevention
This policy paper considers the paradigm shift in prevention approaches required to respond to today's extremism challenges, focusing on a human rights based approach.
Open Source, Self Defence: Tackling the Challenge of Extremist Websites and Open Source Tech
This analysis by ISD shows how extremist websites rely on open source tools and services to evade moderation for hate speech, incitements to violence or other content policy violations. While this presents a challenge, it also creates an opportunity to move beyond simplistic models of content moderation to responses driven by open source communities themselves.
Gaming and Extremism: The Extreme Right on Twitch
ISD discovered that content which expresses support for extreme right wing ideologies can be discovered on Twitch with relative ease, for example, through the practice of “Omegle Redpilling.” However, these videos are probably better considered as sporadic examples rather than representative of the systemic use of Twitch by the extreme right for radicalisation and coordination.
An Online Environmental Scan of Right-Wing Extremism in Canada
This report documents the second-year findings of a study by researchers at ISD which tracks the online ecosystems used by right-wing extremists (RWE) in Canada. This work is delivered in the context of a larger study into Canadian RWE, led by a team of researchers at Ontario Tech University (OTU) in partnership with Michigan State University and the University of New Brunswick.