Episode Details

On the 15th of March, 2019, a 28-year-old man walked into a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, holding a shotgun and semi-automatic rifle – and opened fire.

And what set this story apart was not just its brutality, but also the way it was staged – from the internet, for the internet. The gunman had strapped a GoPro to his helmet, and was streaming every second of the Christchurch shooting over Facebook Live. And just before he entered Al-Noor mosque, he said to his online audience: “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.”

We look at online radicalisation, the deep internet meta-humour that was littered through the manifesto – and the role of platforms like 8chan and YouTube in the rise of far-right terrorism.