(Content warning: contains references to self-harm and suicide.)
The first session on this second day at the 2026 Association of Internet Researchers conference in Mexico City for me is on digital extremism, and we start with Sean McCafferty. His focus is on coerced self-harm as a form of nihilist violent extremism (NVE), and on the legal protections against this that do or do not exist in the European context.
This is a new phenomenon which has become a growing topic in recent years, also in counterterrorism contexts (though perhaps it does not fit this category especially well). NVE occurs both online and offline, and often operates through online coercion practices; there are various online communities dedicated to such practices, encouraging or extorting people to engage in extreme violence, sexual acts, child sexual abuse, doxxing, and self-harm.
Such communities tend to be leaderless, though there are channel owners on various social media platforms; there is no clear ideological positioning; and coerced self-harm often functions as a kind of gateway to these communities as it affords peer recognition.
Sean explored this through a snowball sampling, focussing for now especially on Telegram channels during September 2025; content from these channels was qualitatively coded for its themes, and types of harms. From this, the coercion of self-harm emerged as a key category; this includes both self-injury and even assisted suicide. Proof of such coercion functioned as a prerequisite for access to further private Telegram channels.
Many of the public channels contained images of self-harm, content coercing others to self-harm, and listed such coercion as a condition of entry to private channels; a slightly smaller percentage also did the same for coerced suicide. In a number of cases there is also a victim-perpetrator connection, where victims of coercion or doxxing later become perpetrators of coercion; minor girls are a particular target category for coercion, with minor boys much less prominent.
NVE is difficult to classify as terrorism; there is no clear political objective, no clear in-/out-group view, and no obvious terrorist intent. This also means that avenues towards support and compensation are closed off somewhat in various European countries; in Germany, there is already a social compensation law, however, which does recognise psychological violent acts as a distinct category of victimisation.
But more is to be done: victims are sometimes treated as offenders, and the role of coercion in self-harm or suicide is not often recognised. Better legal frameworks are required across the EU.
