'Flaming, Trolls and Memes: Digital Dimensions of Coexistence in Cyberspace'

Here's a link to my presentation 'Flaming, Trolls and Memes: Digital Dimensions of Coexistence in Cyberspace' from the #Coexistence Conference held in Cardiff @MuslimWales which has just been released.

Yemen - update

Brookings, In Yemen, Iran outsmarts Saudi Arabia again analysis/opinion

Peaceful Coexistence Conference

I will be participating in this event, giving a short panel panel on anti-Muslim rhetoric online. 

Networking

MIT Technology Review, How Close Are You Really?, 16 Oct 2017 "A diagram of your social network reveals the strength of your individual relationships, network scientists say."

De los imames a los nuevos predicadores: liderazgos en la interpretacion del Islam en Europa

Lina Klemkaite, CIDOB, De los imames a los nuevos predicadores: liderazgos en la interpretacion del Islam en Europa "The aim of this article is to analyse the locus of Muslim religious authority in Europe. It has shifted, leading to an increased number of Muslim voices demanding space for critical and intellectual participation and a degree of rivalry for religious and social authority. Those competing for religious au- thority have primarily been men, but women – contrary to prevailing opinion – have not been wholly excluded. We may thus af rm that women also participate in this compe- tition for authority, although only to a cer- tain degree. Ultimately, there are ever more Muslim social, political and religious lead- ers advocating a range of causes with the aim of satisfying the sophisticated demands of the individualised Muslim community."

New & Noted

Digital Resistance in the Middle East New Media Activism in Everyday Life - Deborah L. Wheeler 

IS analysed

Charlie Winter, lawfareblog.com, What I Learned from Reading the Islamic State’s Propaganda Instruction Manual "The Islamic State has long issued a steady torrent of sophisticated propaganda to demonize its enemies, inspire its followers, and advance its cause in general. How does the Islamic State think about its own propaganda efforts? Through serious sleuthing and impressive analysis, Charlie Winter of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation has unearthed the Islamic State’s media guide for its own operatives and explains to us its three-pronged strategy."

A War of Keywords

Frank Gardner, BBC News, UK losing online extremism battle, research suggests, "Britain and other western countries are losing the battle against extremism online, research has suggested. "Extremist content on search engines is becoming ever more dominant, the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics and firm Digitalis has found."

The report is here: Mubaraz Ahmed, Fred Lloyd George, A War of Keywords. I downloaded a copy in December 2016.

Note: The Centre on Religion and Geopolitics is part of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Munich Security Report 2017

Munich Security Report 2017 

"Is the world facing disorder and the rise of illiberal actors? Just ahead of the 53rd edition of the Munich Security Conference from February 17-19, the Munich Security Conference Foundation released the third edition of its annual report on key issues in international security (download a PDF version of the report here)."

Allegations: 'University research into IS women was carried out by IS sympathiser'

NRC - DutchNews.nl, University research into IS women was carried out by IS sympathiser, 18 Jan 2017 article on allegations relating to research conducted at the University of Amsterdam - "University of Amsterdam research into women who have joined the terrorist movement IS was partly carried out by a researcher who has herself praised the violent jihad on internet, according to the NRC." Details of the original research are here: Navest, A., de Koning, M. and Moors, A. (2016), Chatting about marriage with female migrants to Syria, Anthropology Today, 32: 22–25. doi: 10.1111/1467-8322.12241

Yemen

BBC Radio 4, The Briefing Room, Yemen "Yemen is in crisis. After 20 months of conflict, children are dying of malnutrition. This week the Disasters Emergency Committee launched a major appeal for aid.

"But what are the causes of Yemen's civil war and who is fighting? Is it correct to describe it as a "proxy war" between Saudi Arabia and Iran?

"David Aaronovitch is joined by two experts with intimate knowledge of Yemen."

Excellent programme on Yemen

Terrorism and Social Media conference

TASM, Terrorism & Social Media Conference CFP to be held at Swansea University next year.

Analyzing How Islamic State Recruits Through Social Media

eurasiareview.com, Analyzing How Islamic State Recruits Through Social Media, 17 June 2016 "The researchers, who identified and analyzed second-by-second online records of 196 pro-ISIS groups operating during the first eight months of 2015, found that even though most of the 108,000-plus individual members of these self-organized groups probably never met, they had a striking ability to adapt and extend their online longevity, increase their size and number, reincarnate when shut down–and inspire “lone wolves” with no history of extremism to carry out horrific attacks like the nation’s deadliest mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando this week." Report is here: N. F. Johnson et al., Science, New online ecology of adversarial aggregates: ISIS and beyond”, June 17, 2016 [one for the reading list]

New tool to take down terrorism images online spurs debate on what constitutes extremist content

Ellen Nakashima, washingtonpost.com, New tool to take down terrorism images online spurs debate on what constitutes extremist content "“If you could search out the beheading videos, or the picture of the ISIS fighter all in black carrying the Daesh flag across the sands of Syria, if you could do it with video and audio, you’d be doing something big,” said Mark Wallace, chief executive of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a nonpartisan policy group. “I believe it’s a game-changer.”" CEP info here + related IBTimes piece here

ISIS: A History.

LSE Review of Books, New & Noted: ISIS: A History. Fawaz A. Gerges. Princeton University Press. 2016.

Reading List: new ISIS book

David Kilcullen, Guardian, The deadly efficiency of Isis and how it grew on the global stage "In this exclusive extract from his hotly anticipated book Blood Year, counterinsurgency expert David Killcullen maps out the leaderless resistance, remote radicalisation, and guerrilla-style terrorism that characterise the ‘Isis Internationale’."

Jihad: Between Theory and Practice.

I gave a paper at Leiden University last Friday, as part of their conference Jihad: Between Theory and Practice.

It was an interesting event and well-organised event (convened by Dr Jelle Bruning), with other presentations by Asma Afsaruddin (Indiana University) on 'Qur'anic Jihad and Its Interpretations', and Yumna Masarwa Institute for American Universities, Aix-en-Provence) on 'Ribat, Jihad, and Archaeology'.    There's a related interview on my 'E-Jihad 2.0' paper here: Mare, Slick en schokken.

'Why we keep getting snared in Islamic State’s propaganda trap'

Haroro J. Ingram, theconversation.com, Why we keep getting snared in Islamic State’s propaganda trap, 21 Jan 2016 "The rise of Islamic State (IS) has reaffirmed what al-Qaeda and the Taliban proved last decade: strategic communications, particularly counter-propaganda efforts, remains one of the key weaknesses of Western counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency strategy."

Profiling 'female foreign fighters'

SMH, Why many local Muslim women will never turn to terror "Audrey Alexander, a research associate at London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation​, monitors the online comments of dozens of women who have travelled overseas to support IS, or are planning to. She says there is no one profile for women who become 'female foreign fighters'." This article has a focus on Australia.

New Report: Whither Blogestan

New Report: Whither Blogestan: Evaluating Shifts in Persian Cyberspace | Digital Islam: The link to the PDF requires some registration for Annenberg School for Communication's Iran Media Program(me). So I haven't had a chance to take a look yet.