White Paper - The Role of Prevent in Countering Online Extremism

The following White Paper addresses the role of the UK government and social media companies and Internet service providers (ISP) in monitoring and policing the Internet for extremist and/or terrorismrelated content. This paper seeks to analyse the effectiveness of the UK government’s Prevent strategy and provide recommendations for its improvement in line with the current nature of the threat. Currently, the two biggest challenges for UK counter-terrorism are the radicalisation 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 subject is of great importance, especially as government debates how best to tackle extremism and adequately implement counter-extremism measures both in real terms and online. Sections 2 and 3 discuss the framework of the government’s Prevent strategy, while sections 4 through 9 detail the challenges extremism and terrorism-related content online pose. Section 10 addresses the role of Prevent in countering online extremism in the UK.