Call for Papers: Violent Extremism and Radicalization in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Washington D.C., July 15, 2026

Interested authors should submit an abstract (300–500 words) stating their research question, methodology, key arguments, and a brief biography (150 words). Full papers will be carefully reviewed and may be subject to editing before publication.

Please send submissions and inquiries to [email protected] with the subject line:
“PoECFP27 – the Era of Artificial Intelligence.”

Artificial intelligence is changing the digital spaces in which radicalization and extremism develop. It shapes how people find content, produce narratives, form identities, interact, translate, and are moderated online. Extremist adoption is no longer hypothetical: Islamic State supporters have circulated AI-generated news bulletins within hours of attacks, neo-Nazi networks produce synthetic propaganda imagery at scale, and automated translation now carries extremist content across language barriers at negligible cost. The relationship also runs in reverse: hostility toward AI itself, its infrastructure, its companies, and its perceived social costs is emerging as a mobilizing grievance in its own right. Governments and technology companies are deploying AI to counter these threats in turn, yet we still know little about how effective these countermeasures are, what their limits and side effects may be, or how quickly both offense and defense are evolving.

Public debate, meanwhile, has run ahead of the evidence. Algorithmic “rabbit holes,” generative propaganda, deepfakes, and automated recruitment are routinely invoked as established facts, but the research record is thinner and more equivocal than the debate suggests. Empirical studies of recommender systems, for instance, indicate that exposure to extremist content is driven as much by user demand as by algorithmic supply. The problem is not that these threats are imagined. It is that they are asserted more often than they are measured.

This special issue seeks to close that gap. It welcomes evidence-based, policy-focused research on how violent extremists use artificial intelligence and how AI systems are reshaping radicalization and mobilization. We encourage submissions that examine violent extremists’ AI-related practices, their measurable impact on radicalization, and their implications for policy and governance, grounded in data rather than in scenarios.

While the issue is global in scope, it gives particular attention to the preparedness of the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe, and to how their institutions are responding to AI-driven radicalization and extremism. It also focuses on the Middle East, where AI is consumed in languages that platform moderation serves poorly, and where AI systems are quickly becoming trusted intermediaries for the most complex and contested questions, including, increasingly, a vehicle for jihadist content. What policy gets right in the coming years will depend less on anticipating every capability these systems might acquire than on measuring the ones extremists are already using.

The full Call for Papers can be viewed here.

In partnership with the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) and the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS), the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

Editor:

Dr. Omar Mohammed, Program on Extremism, The George Washington University

Guest Editors: Julien Bellaiche, The Global Network on Extremism and Technology
Dr. Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS), the Department of War Studies at King’s College London