By Julian Nida-Rümelin and Nathalie Weidenfeld
Deals with cultural and philosophical aspects of artificial intelligence and pleads for a “digital humanism.” Philosophically sound and yet written in a way that will make it accessible for everybody interested in the subject. Provides a vision of what it means to live in a world where AI is a central technology for a more humane civilization.
Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. 129p.
Edited by Bharath Ganesh and Jonathan Bright
Extreme digital speech (EDS) is an emerging challenge that requires co-ordination between governments, civil society and the private sector. In this report, a range of experts on countering extremism consider the challenges that EDS presents to these stakeholders, the impact that EDS has and the responses taken by these actors to counter it. By focusing on EDS, our consideration of the topic is limited to the forms of extreme speech that take place online, often on social media platforms and multimedia messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram. Furthermore, by focusing on EDS rather than explicitly violent forms of extreme speech online, we (as Matti Pohjonen writes in this report) ‘depart’ from a focus on violence and incorporate a broader range of issues such as hateful and dehumanising speech and the complex cultures and politics that have formed around EDS. This focus brings into view a much broader range of factors that help assemble extremist networks online.
This perspective is necessary, given the role that hate speech plays in extreme right-wing networks and the complexity of Daesh propaganda which uses videos to synthesise utopic images of life in the so-called ‘Khilafa’. Following JM Berger’s recent book, Extremism (2018), we can think of EDS as a core practice that produces an archive of online extremist resources that reinforce the sense of in-group belonging across a network of geographically dispersed users, whether this be the networks of jihadists connected on Telegram, or right-wing extremists that use trolling tactics to hack mainstream opinion on Twitter. All the same, while it is well-known that EDS is prolific online, there is little understanding of what kind of impact participation in these networks actually has on the likelihood of an individual’s engagement in political violence. Moreover, very little is known about what methods are being used to challenge EDS and what solutions are best suited for this problem. This report seeks to provide policymakers, researchers and practitioners with an overview of the context of EDS, its impact, and the responses and solutions being mobilised to counter it. In order to do this, this report assembles a set of ten brief essays intended to serve as a starting point for further exploration of a range of topics related to the management of EDS across government, civil society and the private sector.
Dublin: VOX-POL Network of Excellence, Dublin City University, 2019. 123p.
