DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY has been given €5 million in European funding to head up a major international research project into violent political extremism on the internet.

The research will look at the activities of violent jihadists, nationalist-separatists, and extreme right-wing groups on the internet.

The project will be led by Dr Maura Conway of DCU’s School of Law and Government, who has conducted a large amount of work on terrorism and the internet. Dr Conway will lead a team of researchers from around the world on the project.

The research is expected to be used to ensure that policies across the EU to target violent online extremism are based on concrete evidence and knowledge.

“Through their use of the internet, contemporary violent political extremists work to reach a much wider audience than they previously had access to,” said Dr Conway.

Substantive academic research into online extremism is still relatively new, Dr Conway said, and often fragmented. The new project aims to tackle some of the “major under-explored topics” of political extremism and the internet.

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