Countering Terrorist Content Online: Removal = Success? : A Critical Discourse Analysis of the EU Regulation 2021/784

Abstract: This thesis critically interrogates the underlying assumptions which legitimise the hard regulation of online platforms regarding terrorist content, by turning to the case of the EU Regulation 2021/784. Utilising qualitative critical discourse analysis, the study analyses how the EU's strategy against terrorist content online is discursively legitimised through the lens of Theo van Leeuwen's framework for discursive legitimisation strategies, focusing on moral and rational justifications. The study's empirical contribution demonstrates how the EU's strategy is legitimised primarily through public security, fundamental rights, digital economy and efficiency discourses. It contributes theoretically by highlighting how counter-terrorism measures regarding online spaces function through rationalisation and moralisation strategies which legitimise policies as reasonable and morally justifiable, when in fact they rest upon a series of contested assumptions and narratives about the threat from terrorist content. Furthermore, the study puts forward that the regulation contributes to the institutionalisation of online platforms role in countering terrorist content online and reproduces unequal power relations between large and small hosting service companies, public authorities, and individuals.