Extremist and counter extremist narratives in the digital sphere and their impact on domestic information ecosystems

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This research proposal was developed on the basis of the brief advertising the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Studentship between the University of Southampton and Imperial War Museums (IWM) on "Digital Blowback: The Unintended Impact of Military Influence Campaigns Upon the UK and US Public". The project provides an opportunity to produce original, interdisciplinary research on the increasing prevalence of military influence operations in cyberspace, and their impact on domestic information ecosystems, i.e. the general public, in the UK or US. The project focuses primarily on studying these interactions in the digital sphere, offering a very exciting approach to primary source analysis in the area of information warfare. The subject area of this studentship is of particular interest to me, because I have an enduring interest in the content of extremist and counter extremist influence operations as well as online dissemination strategies in our increasingly interconnected information ecosystem. I am especially interested in examining the interplay of these dynamics to better understand how influence operations are perceived by their target audiences. I believe that this subject remains an understudied part of the literature because of problems with assessing responses to influence operations, particularly online, but that a study of how extremist and counter extremist narratives interact in the digital sphere, can provide valuable insights to that end.