Bloomberg Big Take Podcast: “How Racist Groups Use Online Video Games to Spread Hate”
Alex Newhouse discussed his work to eliminate hateful content from online gaming platforms on Bloomberg’s The Big Take podcast.
Alex Newhouse
Senior Research Fellow, Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism
- Office
- McGowan Building
- Tel
- (831) 647-3522
- anewhouse@middlebury.edu
Alex Newhouse is a Senior Research Fellow at CTEC. He specializes in mixed-methods analysis of online extremism. His areas of focus include militant accelerationism, Christian nationalism, eco-fascism, conspiracy theories, and the exploitation of video games by violent extremists.
Alex helped start CTEC in 2018, when he was a graduate student at MIIS. He initially worked as an independent contractor then as a Research Lead before becoming Deputy Director in 2020. He now works as a Senior Research Fellow while pursuing his PhD at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He previously worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation) on the data governance team, focusing on data privacy compliance issues. Before that, he spent time fighting credit card and payments fraud on PlayStation’s fraud management team. He also has experience working as a reporter for GameSpot.com.
Alex has an MA in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Middlebury Institute, an MS in Analytics from Georgia Tech, and a BA in Political Science and English from Middlebury College.
Courses Taught
INTD 1232
Online Extremism
Course Description
Online Extremism: Theory, Research, and Practice
In recent years, the Internet has provided extremists and terrorists revolutionary new ways to organize, radicalize, and recruit in pursuit of their aims. No longer confined to fringe communities, online extremism is a profound issue across every major social network and has played a role in political conflicts across the globe. In the first half of this course, we will explore the growing corpus of academic research on online extremism. In the second half, we will use open-source tools to collect, process, and analyze data on Internet-based extremists.
Terms Taught
Winter 2021
Requirements
DED, SOC, WTR
NPTG 8586
Digital Extremism
Course Description
In recent years, the Internet has provided extremists and terrorists revolutionary new ways to organize, radicalize, and recruit in pursuit of their aims. No longer confined to fringe communities, online extremism is a profound issue across every major social network and has played a role in political conflicts across the globe. In the first half of this course, we will explore the growing corpus of academic research on online extremism. In the second half, we will use open-source tools to collect, process, and analyze data on Internet-based extremists.
Terms Taught
Spring 2023 - MIIS
PSCI 0500
Upcoming
Independent Project
Course Description
Independent Projects
A program of independent work designed to meet the individual needs of advanced students. (Approval required)
Terms Taught
Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Winter 2023, Winter 2024, Winter 2025
Research Centers
Publications
“The Threat is the Network: The Multi-Node Structure of Neo-Fascist Accelerationism.” CTC Sentinel. June 2021.
“Far-right activists on social media telegraphed violence weeks in advance of the attack on the US Capitol.” The Conversation. January 2020.
“Parler is bringing together mainstream conservatives, anti-Semites and white supremacists as the social media platform attracts millions of Trump supporters.” The Conversation. November 2020.
“The Radicalization Risks of GPT-3 and Advanced Neural Language Models.” Arxiv. September 2020.
“The Industrialization of Terrorist Propaganda.” Release Strategies and the Social Impacts of Language Models. October 2019.
“From Classifieds to Crypto: How White Supremacist Groups Have Embraced Crowdfunding.” Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism. July 2019.
“Saving Face: Law Enforcement Must Recognize Pitfalls of Facial Recognition Technology.” The Hill. July 2019.
News Feed
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CTEC Partners with Meta to Support White House Initiative to Combat Violent Extremism
| by Sierra Abukins
The partnership was announced during President Biden’s United We Stand summit at the White House.
CTEC is Working on First-of-its-Kind Social Media Database on Far-Right Movements
| by Stephen Diehl
With funding from Logically, the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) will create a major new social media data resource to better understand how extremists organize, form narratives, and advance disinformation in the radicalization process.