Donald Holbrook
Donald Holbrook is an Associate Fellow at ICCT. He became a lecturer at the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion at Lancaster University, UK, in September 2016. Prior to that he was Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews, which he joined in 2008.
His research has focused mostly on beliefs, ideas, and media in the context of terrorism and political violence, especially on how terrorists interact with published media and social media and how this engagement has changed over time. He has published on a wide variety of topics relating to these themes, including a book, edited volumes, journal articles, as well as reports and other deliverables for counterterrorism practitioners and policymakers. He currently manages a large-scale research project dissecting ways in which individuals involved in terrorism use different types of media, developing case studies and thematic analyses of different ideological milieus (including far-right and Islamist extremism), different types of activity (including domestic terrorism and ‘foreign fighters’) and different organisational contexts (such as groups versus lone actors), as well as comparisons across sections.
A selection of publications can be found on http://lancaster.academia.edu/DonaldHolbrook
In the context of the proliferation of extremist hate speech in Europe in recent years, legislative provisions have been enacted that inevitably resulted in potentially substantial limitations on the right to freedom of speech. A number of individuals have been subjected to onerous administrative measures in relation to their speech – sometimes after a criminal […]
Strategic communications in CVE—sometimes referred to as “counter-narratives” or “alternative narratives”—are difficult. They are often maligned for a lack of evidence demonstrating their effectiveness, or worse, that they may have a detrimental effect. In this Perspective, we draw on findings from a recent study which suggests that strategic communications campaigns may rely too heavily on […]
In this Perspective, Tanya Mehra critically analyses the current European approach to repatriating foreign fighters