Recently, there has been a significant increase in the number of mass casualty attacks where the modus operandi matches ideologically motivated extremist/terrorist attacks, but where the perpetrator appears to have no ideological motivation and is instead motivated by a fascination with violence. Analysis of the online behaviours of multiple such attackers have shown so-called “gore sites” to feature prominently in their digital footprint. These gore sites host graphic videos and images of real-world violence and death, with the emerging literature on the subject demonstrating that they also host ideological extremist content. This research note uses the unique Gore Online Ecosystem Dataset (GOED) to build upon this previous work and assess how individuals on gore sites interact with ideological extremist content. It is found that the overall number of ideological extremist videos in the data are very small (1.47%), with only 0.52% of users posting such content. Crucially, the data demonstrates a ‘specialisation effect’, whereby users who upload more ideological extremist videos often upload the same video multiple times; with these repeat uploads accounting for 76.79% of all ideological extremist video uploads. Furthermore, it is shown that, while the majority of users who posted a comment to an ideological extremist video did so with either a mocking sentiment or condemning the attacker, users who did post ideological extreme content were statistically more likely to make a post that demonstrated ideological/political support or commentary.
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