Webinar: Digital Frontlines Online Extremism and Prevention Since 9/11

In the 25 years since 9/11, the frontline against violent extremism has shifted from physical spaces to digital ones, and online violence prevention has grown to meet it, spanning law, multilateral diplomacy and multistakeholder cooperation across governments, industry and civil society. Its goal has always been the same: to stop online violent extremism from taking root and spreading into real world violence. Yet one thread runs through nearly all of it, often unacknowledged at the outset: gender. From the earliest counter-terrorism frameworks to today's fastest-growing online harms, misogyny and violence against women have moved from the margins of the field to its centre. This panel, moderated by Moonshot, brings together Prof Stuart Macdonald (Swansea University, TASM), Sian Hutchinson (UNOCT) and Yasmin Chilmeran (Christchurch Call Foundation) to take stock of how online extremism has evolved and what prevention has achieved. The discussion traces how gendered narratives, grievance and radicalisation have shaped extremist movements throughout the past 25 years, and why the manosphere, tech-facilitated gender-based violence and misogynistic content in gaming spaces have become some of the most pressing online harms of the current moment.