Home Affairs Committee – Nineteenth Report
Roots of violent radicalisation
The Internet 1, The Internet 2

57. Given the impossibility of comprehensively controlling the internet, it is necessary to employ other methods to tackle the issue. Alyas Karmani argued:

If you are thinking about banning the internet, you have just got to provide a counter-narrative. That is what we do at STREET, so what we do is we identify their narrative and then you have to put an equally effective counter-narrative, because if you ban one site, 10 others emerge, and the sophistication of various ideologues in terms of promoting on the internet and through social media is highly proficient.[107]

The Government has been attempting to counter terrorist ideology, this work being led by the Research, Information and Communications Unit at the Home Office; however, Charles Farr admitted that:

Getting that message across … to a group of people who would rarely read the media that we would normally work with, is very challenging.[108]

Communications Committee – Third Report
The future of investigative journalism
Online Content, Whistleblowers

62. At present material published by newspapers online falls under the remit of the Press Complaints Commission. Video and audio content which has previously been broadcast on a television channel or radio station and is then made available online falls within the remit of the Authority for Video On-Demand (ATVOD), Ofcom and/or the BBC Trust as appropriate. However, content outside these spheres such as blogs or other websites are not subject to any sector-specific regulation at all and may be entirely outside our national jurisdiction.

63. We note that Lord Justice Leveson and Lord Hunt of Wirral, together with the Government as part of its forthcoming Communications review, have confirmed that they will consider whether it may be appropriate to bring certain forms of online content, which currently fall outwith the scope of regulation, into the remit of the relevant regulatory body. This should continue to remain a priority. We look forward to their recommendations in this area and to their suggestions on how to put them into practice.