White Paper – The Role of Prevent in Countering Online Extremism

This white paper addresses the role of the UK government, social media companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) in monitoring and policing the Internet for extremist and/or terrorism related content. This paper analyses the effectiveness of the UK government’s Prevent strategy and provides recommendations for its improvement in line with the current nature of the extremist threat. Currently, the article attests, the two biggest challenges for UK counter-terrorism are the radicalization and recruitment of individuals by the jihadist organisation Islamic State (IS) and the use of the Internet by IS and other extremist organisations to spread unwanted and potentially dangerous ideologies and narratives internationally.

This article would be particularly useful to researchers interested in understanding how cooperation between government, social media companies and ISPs can be improved both in the UK and beyond.