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The Long Tail of Influence Operations: A Case Study on News Front

Elise Thomas

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 17 pp.

"This case study examines two websites and two blogging accounts which appear to be linked to News Front, a Crimean-based news organisation previously accused of being a source of pro-Kremlin disinformation and influence operations. The sites and accounts shared stories and images in many cases iden ... more

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Islamogram: Salafism and Alt-Right Online Subcultures

Moustafa Ayad

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 38 pp.

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Polarising Content and Hate Speech Ahead of Kenya's 2022 Elections

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 15 pp.

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Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok

Ciarán O'Connor

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 56 pp.

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Mainstreamed Extremism and the Future of Prevention

Milo Comerford, Sasha Havlicek

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 28 pp.

"Laying out the core elements of a progressive prevention infrastructure, this paper makes the case for placing human rights as the central goal of prevention work. We highlight both the major damage done to prevention through violations of fundamental rights in the name of fighting terrorism and ex ... more

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Online Extremism in North Macedonia: Politics, Ethnicities and Religion

Simeon Dukic

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 32 pp.

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Online Extremism in Slovakia: Actors, Topics, Platforms & Strategies

Richard Kuchta

Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 28 pp.

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MENA Monitor: Arabic COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Online

Ciarán O'Connor, Moustafa Ayad

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 19 pp.

"Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the subsequent development and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines are rampant across Arabic-language Facebook pages and groups. They are also linked to a larger network of anti-vaccination websites, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels across the web. Researchers f ... more

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Ill Advice: A Case Study in Facebook’s Failure to Tackle COVID-19 Disinformation

Aoife Gallagher, Macckenzie Hart, Ciarán O'Connor

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 34 pp.

"Despite detailed policies on mis- and disinformation and promises to enforce them, social media platforms are failing to tackle prominent groups and individuals who spread false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines online. Using the World Doctors Alliance1 as a case study, a group that has spread var ... ious problematic, false and conspiratorial claims about COVID-19 and vaccines, ISD found that 78% of the group’s 1.2 million online followers are found on mainstream platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok) who claim to prohibit this kind of content. The Facebook pages of World Doctors Alliance members have a following of over 550,000 users, which increased by 13,215% between January 2020 and July 2021. Videos posted by these Facebook pages have been viewed more than 21.1 million times. These pages have accumulated a total of 5.77 million interactions since January 2020, with interaction rates increasing by 85% in the first six months of 2021 compared to the previous six months. Facebook posts mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members have attracted more than three million engagements on Facebook and are present in at least 46 different languages on the platform. ISD found that large proportions—often the majority—of the most engaged with content on Facebook mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members in English, Spanish, German and Arabic contained false, misleading or conspiratorial claims related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Organisations that are part of Facebook’s fact-checking program have debunked false claims made by the World Doctors Alliance 189 times since the beginning of the pandemic. Despite this extensive fact-checking effort, Facebook is failing to take decisive action on the group or its members. Facebook’s fact-checking program incorporates organisations from 115 countries, but there appear to be major gaps in fact-checking in non-English languages. ISD found minimal application of fact-checking labels across the four languages analysed, with lower application rates on posts in German, Spanish and Arabic than in English. Content that does contain fact-checking labels is still accumulating tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of engagements." (Key findings) more

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Voices of Pakistani Youth: Lessons for Civil Society in the Development of Effective Counter-Narrative Campaigns

Jasmeet Sahotay

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2020), 33 pp.

"This report ties together young Pakistani people’s experiences of hate and extremism – with contextual research and questions put to young people in Pakistan, centred around their views on identity, media consumption patterns and perceptions of the state and national news media. This research h ... more

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The 101 of Disinformation Detection

Carl Miller, Chloe Colliver

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2020), 21 pp.

"Disinformation tactics and the responses in place to try to mitigate them online are changing rapidly. Organisations witnessing or targeted by disinformation therefore require a baseline understanding of the threats posed by disinformation and how to spot them while conducting their work. This tool ... more

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Developing a Civil Society Response to Online Manipulation

Carl Miller, Chloe Colliver

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2020), 30 pp.

"This document presents a vision for a grand, civil societal response to online manipulation: developing the capability to detect it; the coalitions to confront it, the strategies to prevent it, and the structures of cooperation and funding that are needed to do both across all the causes and issues ... 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

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The Counter-Narrative Monitoring & Evaluation Handbook

Loius Reynolds, Henry Tuck

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2016), 55 pp.

"The aim of this handbook is to provide civil society campaigners with the knowledge and skills they need to undertake high quality counter-narrative campaign evaluations. It presents model frameworks and case studies of successful counter-narrative M&E, as well as a range of useful tools and resour ... more

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The Impact of Counter-Narratives: Insights from a Year-Long Cross-Platform Pilot Study of Counter-Narrative Curation, Targeting, Evaluation and Impact

Tanya Silverman, Christopher J. Stewart, Zahed Amanullah, Jonathan Birdwell

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD); Against Violent Extremism (AVE) (2016), 52 pp.

"This report presents the development, deployment, and evaluation of three counternarrative campaigns orchestrated by Against Violent Extremism (AVE) network and Jigsaw (an incubator within Alphabet that uses technology to address geopolitical issues) with additional in-kind and financial support fr ... more