About the Project
Learn more about the elements that make up the Definitions and Legislation Project.
Project Aims
The Definitions and Legislation Project is a special project of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). GIFCT works to ensure that tech companies and the broader multi-stakeholder community are equipped to counter the terrorist and violent extremist threat as it manifests online. Through technical solutions, tools, and resources, and its academic research arm, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), GIFCT brings together the technology industry, government, civil society, and academia to foster collaboration and information-sharing to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online. GIFCT’s efforts, and those of its community of tech company members, in part rely on and are facilitated by government and intergovernmental organizations that both define terrorism and violent extremism and legislate terrorist and violent extremist content.
The Definitions and Legislation Project seeks to help tech companies and the wider counterterrorism and counter-violent extremism community to understand the complementary and sometimes conflicting nature of both government definitions of terrorism and violent extremism, as well as the growing framework of legislation that regulates tech company actions as it pertains to terrorist and violent extremist content.
Defining Terrorism & Violent Extremism
The Defining Terrorism side of the site specifically seeks to support practitioners in understanding, developing, and applying global definitions of terrorism and violent extremism. Using the definitional elements identified by Schmid and Jongman (1988) and research by Hedayah in GIFCT’s Taxonomy Report (2021), the Global Definitions of Terrorism Map classifies and allows for comparisons of 82 definitions of terrorism and violent extremism from countries and intergovernmental bodies. This tool comprises 60 national definitions of terrorism, 4 intergovernmental bodies’ definitions of terrorism, and 18 countries’ definitions of violent extremism.The project also aims to provide contextual resources for applying definitions and risk mitigations around the application of designation lists.
Legislating Terrorist & Violent Extremist Content
The Legislating Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content side of the site aim to support practitioners, especially tech companies, in understanding how governments worldwide are legislating terrorist and violent extremist content. The Global Legislative Map tracks emerging, proposed, and enacted legislation that places obligations on technology companies and impacts how these organizations enforce their policies and terms of service, specifically regarding terrorist and violent extremist content. The Map currently covers proposals and legislation in 24 countries and 1 region. In some instances, countries with multiple pieces of legislation are included in the Map. The Legislative Map does not include the full range of legislation and regulations that countries are enacting to address the diverse spectrum of online harms, as it specifically focuses on the global framework that informs some of the policies and practices tech companies use to address terrorist and violent extremist content.
Learn More
What is the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism?
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is a unique tech-led nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. Founded in 2017, GIFCT brings together more than 35 technology companies and works closely with governments, civil society, practitioners, and academia to advance collective counterterrorism efforts.
Guided by its strategic pillars of preventing, responding, and adapting to terrorist and violent extremist exploitation of online spaces, GIFCT advances its work through four key tools. These tools include: the hash-sharing database; the Incident Response Framework; GIFCT knowledge products and the support of GIFCT's academic research wing, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology; and convening events, Working Groups, and frameworks for cross-sector and cross-platform knowledge sharing and collaboration.
What is the Global Network on Extremism and Technology?
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) is an academic research initiative backed by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). GNET is convened and led by the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS), a globally renowned academic research centre based within the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
GNET seeks to promote responsible research from academics working on issues within the violent extremism and technology nexus. Their research agenda is focused around the following overarching question: How do online violent extremist behaviours and content relate to offline, real-world harms, and how do mitigation activities responding to those behaviours and content interact with normative social concerns including freedom of expression and conscience, privacy, and human rights?
GNET's research agenda aims to bridge academia, the technology sector, and civil society to address how to mitigate extremist and terrorist use of technology. Their outputs seek to outline solutions or practical recommendations to technology companies looking to counter exploitation by terrorists and violent extremists online.
How Does GIFCT Define Terrorism and Violent Extremism?
Due to the lack of universally agreed upon definitions of terrorism, as well as GIFCT’s global mandate, GIFCT does not rely on a single definition of terrorism or violent extremism to guide its work. Instead, GIFCT works to facilitate broad dialogue and analysis of how terrorism and violent extremism manifest across the ideological spectrum and across offline and online dimensions. To support its Member companies, and the broader stakeholder community in actioning terrorist and violent extremist activity or content online, GIFCT ensures that its Working Groups, its global events and engagements, and its academic research produced by its academic wing, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), contain a diverse group of global practitioners from a range of sectors who can provide insight into the current trends in terrorism and violent extremism online.
GIFCT’s cross-platform tools and protocols, such as the GIFCT hash-sharing database and the Incident Response Framework, which help tech companies identify and when applicable take action on content on their platforms, are guided by refined parameters informed by GIFCT member and multi-stakeholder feedback. These frameworks are designed to be flexible enough to adapt to evolving threats while also capturing areas of strong consensus among members. GIFCT originally established the hash-sharing database taxonomy in 2017 to include images and videos produced by individuals and entities on the United Nations Security Council’s Consolidated Sanctions List. The initial taxonomy sought to establish a common baseline for inclusion that tech platforms could agree upon, preventing differences in operational definitions of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist content.’ Following the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, in which the perpetrator live-streamed his attack, GIFCT expanded the taxonomy to enable hash-sharing of content when the attackers or accomplices produce violent content.
GIFCT’s taxonomy expanded again following the 2021 Taxonomy Report to include attacker manifestos and branded propaganda materials such as PDFs. Rather than following any single government list, GIFCT now uses a set of criteria that allows for labels referencing designated entities on the 1267 Sanctions List, behavioral labels that categorize content by type, or incident labels created from Incident Response Framework (IRF) activations.
While incident labels for the hash-sharing database correspond to perpetrator-produced content from the offline terrorist or mass violence attack that activated the IRF, behavioral labels categorize content by type of terrorist or violent extremist behavior associated with the content including: the glorification of terrorist acts, graphic violence related to offline terrorist or violent extremist events, terrorist recruitment and instruction, and imminent credible terrorist threats.
If you would like to contribute by sharing data that could help us expand this research please contact GIFCT via email at [email protected].
GIFCT does not create definitions of, or legislation on, terrorism or violent extremism, nor does it advise member platforms on how they should or should not designate certain groups or actors.