Impacts of Radical Right Groups’ Movements across Social Media Platforms – A Case Study of Changes to Britain First’s Visual Strategy in Its Removal from Facebook to Gab

Nouri, Lella; Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria; Watkin, Amy-Louise

doi:10.1080/1057610x.2020.1866737

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Stating that "[w]e do not do this lightly, but they have repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups, which disqualifies the Pages from our service" [29]. Whilst a fringe political organisation, the group had a large social media presence, with more than 1.8 million followers and 2 million likes on its Facebook page, more than double the amount of the Labour party (the mainstream party with the most likes) [49,61]. The following year Facebook went further designating the group and its leaders under its new definition of 'dangerous groups and individuals', along with a number of other far-right organisations and individuals [89].…”

Section: Terrorism As a Driver For Deplatforming: From Isis To Political Extremistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Should Regulate Extremist Content Online?

Reed

Henschke

2021

Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications

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As liberal democracies grapple with the evolution of online political extremism, in addition to governments, social media and internet infrastructure companies have found themselves making more and more decisions about who gets to use their platforms, and what people say online. This raises the question that this paper explores, who should regulate extremist content online? In doing so the first part of the paper examines the evolution of the increasing role that social media and internet infrastructure companies have come to play in the regulating extremist content online, and the ethical challenges this presents. The second part of the paper explores three ethical challenges: i) the moral legitimacy of private actors, ii) the concentration of power in the hands of a few actors and iii) the lack of separation of powers in the content regulation process by private actors.

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Section: Terrorism As a Driver For Deplatforming: From Isis To Political Extremistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Should Regulate Extremist Content Online?

Reed

Henschke

2021

Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications

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“…The opaque process that underlies rule development and enforcement introduces unknown and potentially systematic variation to analyses of social media data. Social media platforms are essentially exempt from legal liability for the content posted by their users in both Europe and the United States (Nouri, Lorenzo-Dus and Watkin 2019, 4–5), and platform policy statements like ‘Each situation is evaluated on a case by case basis and ultimately decided upon by a cross-functional team, [and is influenced by] the changing nature of online speech, including how our rules are applied and interpreted in different cultural and social contexts’ (Twitter: Our approach to policy development and enforcement philosophy) indicate large-scale variation among and within platforms. As such, patterns not only differ from country to country, as rules are enforced differently depending on cultural and social contexts, but also over time as social media platforms are free to change the rules and procedures that guide their rule enforcement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perils of Estimating Disengagement Effects of Deadly Terrorist Attacks Utilizing Social Media Data

Hansen

2022

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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This comment discusses the impact of social media rule enforcement protocols on research on online data sources. It argues that the conclusions of the article ‘Do Islamic State's Deadly Attacks Disengage, Deter, or Mobilize Supporters?’ concerning the recruitment effects of deadly attacks cannot be assumed to hold when considering the timing of Twitter account suspensions. It highlights four ways in which suspensions can confound evidence of demobilization despite the introduction of control variables and fixed-effects model specifications. All change the composition of the sample in four non-random ways. First, suspending connected Islamic State accounts may result in follower loss. Secondly, Twitter suspension procedures may be tied to account characteristics, such as follower accrual rates. Thirdly, suspended accounts that re-emerge introduce replication bias. Fourthly, account closure may reflect user movement to other platforms in response to changing security environments following deadly attacks. In conclusion, caution is advised when platform-introduced variation risks altering the sample composition in non-random ways.

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“…Additionally, organisations are working to circumvent content removal strategies as seen in the sharing of news sources example. As already argued, unless there is some standardization in platform responses across the ecosystem, it is going to be difficult to break the whack-a-mole pattern that has emerged over recent years (Nouri, Lorenzo-Dus, Watkin, 2021).…”

Section: Twittermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The findings of this literature review revealed a small number of studies examining terrorist use of small file-sharing sites and alternative platforms. Similar to Urman and Katz (2020) Telegram research, a study by Nouri et al (2021) examined the issue of whack-a-mole in the far-right. This research examined UK far-right group Britain First as they were removed from Facebook and migrated to Gab which is an alternative platform known for attracting far-right groups and individuals because of its lack of willingness to regulate and remove content.…”

Section: Small File-sharing Sites and Alternative Platformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The NetzDG Act highlighted the issue that a narrow scope would result in many of the key platforms in the ecosystem slipping through the cracks and subsequently evading regulation. This could lead to further issues such as migration to less regulated platforms (see Nouri, Lorenzo-Dus and Watkin, 2021). It appears to make more sense for regulation to be as all-encompassing as is possible, providing that the regulator has the resources necessary to oversee all of the platforms.…”

Section: Lessons To Be Learnedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regulating terrorist content on tech platforms: A proposed framework based on social regulation

Watkin¹

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Scholars have been arguing for years that responses to terrorist content on tech platforms have, to-date, been inadequate. Past responses have been reactive and fragmented with tech platforms self-regulating. Over the last few years, many governments began to decide that the self-regulatory approach was not working. As a result, a number of regulatory frameworks have been proposed and/or implemented. However, they have been highly criticised. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a new regulatory framework to counter terrorist content on tech platforms and overcome many of these criticisms. Scholars have argued that it is vital that future regulation be informed by past experience and supported by evidence from prior research. Therefore, a number of steps were taken. First, this thesis examines a review of literature into what platforms are exploited by terrorist organisations. Next, a content analysis was undertaken on blogposts that tech platforms publish in order to investigate the efforts that tech platforms report making to counter terrorist content on their services and the challenges that they face. Third, a sample of existing or currently proposed regulatory frameworks were examined in order to learn what was done well and what gaps, limitations and challenges exist that require addressing in future regulation. Finally, social regulation theory was identified as applicable in this regulatory context. Social regulation strategies were examined in three other regulatory contexts in order to examine whether they could be used in this regulatory context. The findings from the above analyses were used to inform a new regulatory framework that is proposed in this thesis. In addition to proposing a new regulatory framework, this thesis also identified three compliance issues that tech platforms may face. These compliance issues are addressed alongside the proposal of the framework. Overall, it is argued that previous regulatory attempts failed to consider the diverse array of challenges that are faced by different platforms when countering terrorist content. The regulatory framework proposed in this thesis researched these challenges and identified strategies from a social regulation approach, learning lessons from how they were applied elsewhere to overcome some of the key criticisms and limitations of existing regulatory practice.

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Impacts of Radical Right Groups’ Movements across Social Media Platforms – A Case Study of Changes to Britain First’s Visual Strategy in Its Removal from Facebook to Gab

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Who Should Regulate Extremist Content Online?

Who Should Regulate Extremist Content Online?

The Perils of Estimating Disengagement Effects of Deadly Terrorist Attacks Utilizing Social Media Data

Regulating terrorist content on tech platforms: A proposed framework based on social regulation

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