OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Who gets deplatformed? More specifically, why do social media firms designate only some militant organizations as “terrorists,” imposing consequences on the groups and their supporters? There has been little research on which political actors are removed from tech platforms, despite the importance of this topic. Militant organizations use social media for recruiting, fundraising, and other necessities, so being banned is costly. We build an argument drawing on comparisons to governmental terrorist designation policies, but highlighting firms’ profit motivation. Empirically, we examine organizations in the “Terror” category of the Facebook/Meta Dangerous Organizations and Individuals list. Analyses of hundreds of militant organizations suggest that groups are more likely to be declared terrorists if they are especially violent, Islamist, already designated by prominent countries (using multiple measures, including an original index), or operating in a country with many Facebook users. The findings contribute to debates about intersections of technology, politics, and political violence.