Public Mental Health Approaches to Online Radicalisation: An Empty Systematic Review
Overview
Public Health
Authors
Affiliations
Methods: the authors searched Medline (via Ovid), PsycInfo (via Ebscohost) and Web of Science (Core Collection) with the use of Boolean operators across "extremism", "online content" and "intervention".
Results: Following full-text assessments, all retrieved papers were excluded. No publications fulfilled the primary objective of reporting public mental health interventions specifically addressing online radicalisation. However, six publications fulfilled the secondary objective of identifying theoretical and conceptual relationships amongst elements in the three inclusion criteria (online extremism, psychological outcomes and intervention strategy) that could inform interventions within public mental health frameworks. These publications were quality assessed and discussed following the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care guide for reporting empty reviews.
Conclusions: there is an immediate need for further research in this field given the increase in different factions of radicalised beliefs resulting from online, particularly social media, usage.