Institutional ethics review procedures aim – in principle – to minimise harm and evaluate risks, providing an important space to consider the safety of participants and researchers. However, literature has questioned the effectiveness of the process, particularly for reviewing ‘risky’ topics in a risk-averse environment. This article reports the findings…

Despite reports of longterm cognitive and emotional difficulties after exiting right-wing extremist groups, the latter stages of the extremist group member’s trajectory have been given little attention.1 This paper argues that clinical psychological theory has been underutilised in terrorism and extremism research in general, and, more specifically, that it can make…

Since the 2019 and 2022 terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, El Paso, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, both mainstream media and scholarly interest in ecofascism have increased significantly. This policy brief will illustrate how the contemporary far- and extreme right are exploiting the climate crisis and reviving white supremacist…

Most analyses of far-right communication on social media focus on one specific platform, while findings are generalized. In this study, I argue that the far right’s use of social media depends on technology affordances – the linkage between platform design and usage – and, thus, might not always be generalizable….

Irrespective of discipline, the publication of null or non-significant findings is rare in the social sciences. For burgeoning fields like terrorism research, this is particularly problematic. As well as increasing the likelihood of Type II errors, the selective reporting of significant findings ultimately impedes progression, hindering comprehensive syntheses of evidence…

This pilot study examines the correlation of online and on-the-ground behaviours of three lone-actor terrorists prior to their intended and planned attacks on soft targets in North America and Europe: the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, the Buffalo supermarket shooter and the Bratislava bar shooter. The activities were examined with the definition…

The threat of radicalization and extremism continues to jeopardize global security, and the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges. To address these evolving issues, Hedayah’s International Research Conference, held in May 2022 in Granada, Spain, brought together academics and practitioners. This conference featured a compilation of research essays covering various…

This article explores how the threat of terrorism has been addressed at the policy level by offering a fine-grained analysis of a specific preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) project implemented in Mali between 2018 and 2021 by a composite mix of international and national practitioners. Despite the current and…

There has been a rise in the number of terrorist incidents in which social media use has been implicated in the planning and execution of the attack. Efforts to identify online risk signals of terrorist offending is challenging due to the existence of the specificity problem– that while many people…

This is a translation of a conference report first published in German on 22 August 2022 under the title “Im toten Winkel – Rechtsextreme Radikalisierung im Netz”, summarizing the discussions and findings of the research conference held in Berlin in October 2022 as part of the project “Countering radicalisation in right-wing extremist online…

The majority of European citizens – often referred to as ‘foreign fighters’ – that have returned to European soil have predominantly been prosecuted for terrorist offences. In recent years several European countries have been prosecuting alleged terrorists cumulatively for both terrorist offences and core international crimes. This paper explores which…

This study explores the motivational drivers of violent extremism by examining references to motivational goals—values—in texts written by lone offenders. We present a new database of manifestos written by lone offenders (N = 103), the Extremist Manifesto Database (EMD). We apply a dictionary approach to examine references to values in this…