Edited by Silvio Cruschina & Chiara Gianollo

Language is a key element in constructing and reinforcing social identities. Through hate speech, language becomes an instrument of creating and spreading stereotypes, discrimination, and social injustices based on attributes such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, political ideology, disability, or sexual orientation. The rise of digital communication, especially social media, has made hate speech a major topic of research in various fields. An Investigation of Hate Speech in Italian analyses hate speech from a linguistic perspective. The focus is not only on lexical means, but also on more subtle grammatical and pragmatic strategies related to implicit meanings or conversational dynamics. The volume identifies the common linguistic characteristics of hate speech in different domains of communication and explores criteria that can help distinguish between hate speech and freedom of expression. The studies in this volume focus on Italian, but the methods and findings can easily be extended to other languages for comparative and contrastive purposes. The chapters utilize extensive research data. Social media platforms have provided linguistic data that would otherwise be challenging to collect and analyse systematically. The chapters allow readers to link linguistic insights to different real-world contexts, helping them understand the impact language has on various aspects of life and society.

Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2024. 384p.

By Daniel Rueda

The Rise of Nationalist Populism explores the intersection between populism and nationalism, conducted through the discursive analysis of three Populist Radical Right parties that have gained prominence during the 2010s: Rassemblement National (France), Lega (Italy) and Vox (Spain). Due to its rise in Europe, the United States, and further afield, there is a growing interest in right-wing populism, an exclusionary and illiberal form of populism that has been able to attain success in several countries. This book contributes to the analysis of how populism, understood as a way of constructing the political, is shaped by the ideologies that permeate it. It examines how a certain form of nationalism is shaped by populist dynamics, that is by a certain form of identity-building. The book analyses the intersection between nationalism and populism in right-wing populist parties by using a discourse analysis methodology based on Ernesto Laclau’s works, thus conducting an examination similar to the ones presented by the Essex School of Discourse Analysis. The empirical analysis focuses on party literature and carefully selected candidate speeches at a national level for its three case studies, as well as providing an overarching comparison. The book shows how the economic crisis and the irruption of issues related to sovereignty and national identity arising in France, Italy and Spain paved the way for the emergence of their respective right-wing populist forces. The book will appeal to researchers and students of political science,

Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2025. 274p.

By Fernanda Otilla

This book investigates how digital technologies, such as social media and artificial intelligence, can contribute to combatting corruption in Brazil. Brazil, with its long history of scandals and abundant empirical data on digital media usage, serves as a perfect case study to trace the development of bottom-up and top-down digital anti-corruption technologies and their main features. This book highlights the connections between anti-corruption reforms and the rapid implementation of innovative solutions, primarily developed by tech-savvy public officials and citizens committed to anti-corruption efforts. The book draws on interviews with experts, activists and civil servants, as well as open-source materials and social media data to identify key actors, their practices, challenges and limitations of anti-corruption technologies. The result is a thorough analysis of the process of digitalisation of anti-corruption in Brazil, with a theoretical framework which can also be applied to other countries. The book introduces the concept of “integrity techies” to encompass social and political actors who develop and facilitate anti-corruption technologies, and discusses different outcomes and issues associated with digital innovation in anti-corruption. This book will be a key resource for students, researchers and practitioners interested in technologies and development in Brazil and Latin America, as well as corruption and anti-corruption studies more broadly.

Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2025. 152p

Edited by Didier Bigo, Emma Mc Cluskey, and Félix Tréguer

This book adopts a critical lens to look at the workings of Western intelligence and intelligence oversight over time and space. Largely confined to the sub-field of intelligence studies, scholarly engagements with intelligence oversight have typically downplayed the violence carried out by secretive agencies. These studies have often served to justify weak oversight structures and promoted only marginal adaptations of policy frameworks in the wake of intelligence scandals. The essays gathered in this volume challenge the prevailing doxa in the academic field, adopting a critical lens to look at the workings of intelligence oversight in Europe and North America. Through chapters spanning across multiple disciplines – political sociology, history, and law – the book aims to recast intelligence oversight as acting in symbiosis with the legitimisation of the state’s secret violence and the enactment of impunity, showing how intelligence actors practically navigate the legal and political constraints created by oversight frameworks and practices, for instance by developing transnational networks of interdependence. The book also explores inventive legal steps and human rights mechanisms aimed at bridging some of the most serious gaps in existing frameworks, drawing inspiration from recent policy developments in the international struggle against torture. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, sociology, security studies, and international relations.

London; New York: Routledge, 2024. 311p.

By Justine Nolan and Samuel Pryde

Modern slavery in global supply chains is attracting increased attention from states, businesses and civil society including momentum to seek a "regulatory solution" to combatting it. In 2018, Australia introduced a Modern Slavery Act which was modelled on (in part) the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015). These laws emphasise corporate disclosure as the primary means of identifying and remedying modern slavery in supply chains. Whilst these disclosure-based laws harden the expectation that business will conduct itself responsibly, they are ultimately founded on a soft approach that assumes that the transparency gained from disclosure will incentivise corporate action to address human rights risks. Two independent reviews conducted in relation to the UK Act (in 2018) and the Australian law (in 2023) recommended significant changes to improve their regulatory effectiveness, including establishing a more ambitious enforcement model and a requirement to conduct human rights due diligence. This article considers the lessons learned since the establishment of the two modern slavery regimes, it explores the role of human rights due diligence in strengthening the current regulatory regimes and the efficacy of establishing a "failure to prevent" offence to enforce due diligence compliance. Finally, it discusses the utility of states adopting a forced labour import ban as a complementary regulatory strategy to contribute to a holistic regulatory framework to address modern slavery.

UNSW Law Research No. 24-37, 2024, 24p.

By Holly Nguyen, Kyle J. Thomas, Jennifer J. Tostlebe

Employment theoretically serves as a source of informal social control that can promote desistance from crime (Sampson & Laub, 1993). Findings from studies assessing the effects of employment, however, have been mixed. In a seminal study, Uggen (2000) reanalyzed data from the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration Project and found that employment significantly reduced the rate of recidivism among individuals aged 27 and older but had no impact on younger individuals. We reproduce and replicate Uggen's (2000) findings with data from four distinct employment programs: The National Supported Work Program (1975–1979), the Transitional Aid Research Project (1976–1977), the Employment Services for Ex-Offenders (1981–1984), and the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Center for Employment Opportunities (2004–2008). We closely reproduced Uggen's original findings in the NSW but found evidence that the statistically significant interaction between age and employment in the NSW was only present at the year 3 follow-up and the observed effect is highly sensitive to minor threats to internal validity. Furthermore, a significant age–employment interaction was not observed in the three other data sources. These findings should encourage scholars to continue to investigate the age-graded nature of employment and crime, especially through a sociohistorical lens.

Criminology, Volume61, Issue3, August 2023, Pages 449-481

By Prithika Balakrishnan

Incarceration has become the norm for those who assert their innocence. A staggering number of defendants are incarcerated prior to the adjudication of their cases—a reality that has become a central paradox of an American criminal justice system which holds axiomatic the presumption of innocence. Recent attempts to address pretrial mass incarceration through bail reform and the COVID-19 pandemic compassionate release programs have embraced digital surveillance, resulting in unintended and little-understood consequences. This Article examines how the expanded use of pretrial GPS surveillance is radically changing the presumption of innocence by implicating punitive measures absent constitutional protections and amplifying the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. Largely viewed as a substitution for physical detention and therefore a less onerous intrusion on a defendant’s liberty, pretrial GPS surveillance erodes fundamental liberties under the guise of criminal justice regulation. These highly racialized but invisible repercussions include harms to physical and psychological health, freedom of movement, privacy, and future economic self-determination. I argue that, in light of these substantial harms, courts must examine how they evaluate technological surveillance, affording defendants substantive and procedural due process protections where there currently are none. Part I of this Article charts the ways in which bail reform and the COVID-19 pandemic-related compassionate release programs have resulted in the expansion of pretrial GPS monitoring far beyond the footprint of physical incarceration. Part II, examining an empirical case study as a basis, details the specific and racialized harms imposed by technologically-mediated restraint. Part III offers a substantive and procedural due process framework for how courts should weigh these harms. Finally, I argue for a re-assessment of United States v. Salerno to recognize future dangerousness as a fundamentally racialized concept that, guided by increasingly sophisticated means of constant surveillance, oversteps the boundary between regulatory and punitive purposes.

71 UCLA L. Rev. 478 (2024), 61p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

  The Media Literacy Index, compiled in 2023 by the Open Society Institute, suggests that SouthEastern Europe (SEE) is among the most vulnerable regions in Europe to potential online harms. Violent extremist and terrorist groups exploit the internet to spread violent content, gain support, and recruit members. The COVID-19 pandemic saw a proliferation of hostile, sexist and xenophobic conspiracy theories, as highlighted by the UN Secretary-General in August 2022. Emerging studies find that media- and information literacy (MIL) can be useful for preventing the spread of mis- and disinformation and other harmful content online. OSCE Secretariat and field operations in the region have extensively worked on both preventing/ countering violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism (P/CVERLT) and MIL. They have organized a number of activities, including workshops, training sessions, TV programmes and lectures for students – all designed in an effort to address the multi-faceted challenges posed by violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism (VERLT) in the region, in line with OSCE’s comprehensive security approach, as well as to forge close collaborations with state authorities and civil society, in addition to partnering with the private sector in SEE. The first part of this report places the vulnerability to online harms in the context of broader MIL trends and challenges, with a particular focus on P/CVERLT. It highlights the multi-faceted challenges posed by disinformation – including polarization, radicalization to terrorist violence and threats to democracy – before outlining key technological and psychological challenges in addressing disinformation. The second part of the report analyses how these challenges are impacting SEE. Violent extremist groups remain resilient and adaptable, maintaining their audience, size despite repeated removals of their channels and accounts from the most popular online platforms in SEE. It also explores why SEE governments are struggling to respond to the current violent extremism environment,  highlighting media issues (including challenges around transparency, regulation and threats to journalists), the lack of effective and sustainable digital and media literacy education, failures of political leadership, and poor co-ordination among relevant stakeholders. The third part then examines the impact of existing media literacy campaigns, using the OSCE’s research and engagement with experts to identify what works and why. Different approaches – including inoculation theory, counter-narratives and technological approaches – are explored, while also explaining how they can be used to address issues such as confirmation bias and how they can be integrated into age-sensitive MIL approaches. The final part of the report provides substantive recommendations for all stakeholders on framing and communication. It also suggests content and format for a multi-stakeholder training curriculum, including methodology and design as well as strategies for avoiding backlash. The report concludes that, while there are numerous resources and initiatives on addressing the information disorder5 and aiming to foster medial literacy skills, there is a significant gap in connecting these efforts to projects focused on P/CVERLT. This report represents the beginning of an initiative that seeks to raise awareness of critical thinking and analysis, and meaningful engagement in the digital space, in order to build resilience to VERLT. Its follow-up project ‘INFORMED: Information and Media Literacy in Preventing Violent Extremism. Human rights and Gender-sensitive approaches to addressing the Digital Information Disorder’ seeks to support the OSCE participating States in identifying opportunities for collaboration with non-government stakeholders, including the private sector and civil society.    

Vienna:   Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2024. 60p.

By Lina Jakob and Caroline Anderson

This Evidence Brief provides a snapshot of recent research findings on child maltreatment and its impacts on individuals, families and the community. It brings together some of the latest research findings in one place. While the brief is not a comprehensive summary of all relevant evidence, it aims to deliver clear and accessible insights for those involved in developing policies, programs and strategies within the child and family sector. The Evidence Brief also contains a number of infographics that staff working in the sector may find useful to include in presentations and other communication materials.1

Family and Communities Services Insights, Analysis and Research (FACSIAR)

Parramatta NSW : Department of Communities and Justice (NSW), 2024. 14p.