Bosnia Failing in Fight against Extremism Online

"So, the terrorist groups have just moved from one platform to another," Farid, a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, told BIRN.

Bosnia, however, is still playing catch-up, bereft of the legislative framework to tackle online radicalisation, according to a BIRN analysis.

"The state has the ability to actively ask social networks to remove such profiles or content," said Sead Turcalo, an expert in terrorism and professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.

"However, when it comes to radical content, the adopted strategic documents don't even contain a definition of violent extremism or online extremism, so it's hard to develop a systemic approach or build a counter-narrative."

Jailed, but still preaching on YouTube

Illustration. Photo: Pixabay/Ichigo121212

In cooperation the Counter Extremism Project, a not-for-profit policy organisation created to tackle extremist ideologies, Farid was part of a team that developed eGLYPH, a programme designed to detect radical content on the Internet.

Using eGLYPH, the Counter Extremism Project conducted a search on behalf of BIRN for online content regarding Islamic State in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkans.

According to the results, the amount of such content has fallen since Islamic State was in its rise, five to six years ago, but eGLYPH detected content deemed to incite radicalisation and which is still publicly available.

At the time of reporting, a notorious Islamic State video called "Honour is in Jihad: A Message to Balkans People" was still available on a website known to publish the group's propaganda.

A simple search on YouTube also yielded any number of video lectures by a self-anointed...