Gender and Violent Extremism: an analysis of online behaviour across Asia Pacific

This study was produced by Moonshot CVE for UN Women as part of the Empowered Women, Peaceful Communities programme. It is the first gender-disaggregated study of support for violent extremism in the online space in Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Malaysia. The project also aims to highlight any potential associations between rates of sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) and support for violent extremism in these countries. Data collection is currently underway using our interactive monitoring tool, The Tracker, which maps appetite for violently extremist content on search engines and social media platforms.

The Tracker draws on two main sources of information to analyse gender and violent extremism online: search traffic and Facebook data – each adding different value to the overall analysis. Social media activities are often performative. As such, data obtained from channels such as Facebook provides information about how people publicly present themselves, including the opinions, interests, experiences and actions they wish to share. Search engine queries, on the other hand, provide valuable information because they are typically carried out with the expectation that they will not be seen or judged by others. Online searches are thus a reliable method of understanding true levels of interest in, or support for, activities, ideas and opinions which may be socially unacceptable. The results presented here are preliminary and subject to change.