The Dark Crawler

Despite the ongoing need for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to identify and assess the online activities of violent extremists prior to their engagement in violence offline, little is empirically known about their online behaviors generally or differences in their posting behaviors compared to non-violent extremists who share similar ideological beliefs particularly. In this study, we drew from a unique sample of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists to compare their posting behaviors within a sub-forum of […]

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Although many law enforcement and intelligence agencies are concerned about online communities known to facilitate violent right-wing extremism, little is empirically known about the presence of extremist ideologies, expressed grievances, or violent mobilization efforts that make up these spaces. In this study, we conducted a content analysis of a sample of postings from two of the most conspicuous right-wing extremist forums known for facilitating violent extremism, Iron March and Fascist Forge. We identified a number […]

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Radicalized communities are actively using the internet to preach their ideas within society. Hence, it is crucial to research the content of such communities to understand their agenda and potentially take actions. The discussion is spread out in different forums on the Internet, but in this study, we used natural language processing technologies for revealing topics discussed in the oldest right-wing forum StormFront. As a result, we found the co-occurrence of discussed topics and real-world […]

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Many researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are concerned about online communities that are known to facilitate violent right-wing extremism, but little is empirically known about these digital spaces in general and the developmental posting behaviors that make up these spaces in particular. In this study, group-based trajectory modeling—derived from a criminal career paradigm—was used to identify posting trajectories found in the open-access sections of the Iron March and Fascist Forge forums, both of which have gained […]

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Disinformation attacks that make use of Cloudbased social media platforms, and in particular, the attacks orchestrated by the Russian “Internet Research Agency,” before, during and after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election campaign and the 2016 Brexit referendum in the U.K., have led to increasing demands from governmental agencies for technological tools that are capable of identifying such attacks in their earliest stages, rather than identifying and responding to them in retrospect. This paper reports on […]

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