The face of extremism in Indonesia has changed dramatically over the past decade. While the security threat from Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other Salafi-Jihadist groups remains, it has diminished significantly from its heyday in the early 2000s. With many hardline leaders now in prison or dead and current mainstream leaders reluctant to support terror attacks, violence as a means to establish an Islamic state appears to be losing favor in militant circles. New followers continue to be radicalized through a number of channels, but there are also former radicals who are disengaging as they grow disillusioned with movement tactics and leadership, as they develop new relationships, and as their priorities shift. The organized, large-scale bombings have declined, largely in response to a changing security environment. Small-scale attacks and targeted assassinations are still prevalent, but these are often the actions of small splinter groups or unaffiliated individuals. Within JI itself, support for terror attacks on Indonesian soil is increasingly a minority-held view.

We show a direct impact of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) related fires on the demography and persistence of the siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus), a frugivorous, Southeast Asian rainforest primate. Siamang groups affected by ENSO-related wildfires in a Sumatran rainforest were significantly smaller and experienced significantly lower infant and juvenile survival. Likelihood of infants surviving to subadults was higher by a factor of 2.8 for groups in undisturbed habitat. Burn groups had access to 48% fewer reproductive-size strangling fig trees in their territories, compared to non-burn groups. Dietary and foraging behaviour changes associated with habitat disturbance may result in lower productivity and higher mortality of young animals. Reproductive potential of burn groups is insufficient to offset low survival and groups are unlikely to persist for more than two generations. Increasing frequency of ENSO events increases the likelihood that siamang and other long-lived species that rely on fruiting trees will experience multiple fires within one generation; the resulting reduction in seed dispersal services will slow recovery of burned forest.

Positive online interactions between members of recovery communities support the recovery process through helping participants to develop recovery capital that binds them to groups supportive of positive change.

Despite the increasing citizen engagement with socio-political online communities, little is known about how such communities are affected by significant offline events. Thus, we investigate here the ways in which the collective identity of a far-right online community is affected by offline intergroup conflict. We examine over 14 years of online communication between members of Stormfront Downunder, the Australian sub-forum of the global white supremacist community Stormfront.org . We analyse members’ language use and discourse before and after significant intergroup conflict in 2015, culminating in local racist riots in Sydney, Australia. We found that the riots were associated with significant changes in the collective beliefs of the community (as captured by members’ most salient concerns and group norms), emotions and consensus within the community. Overall, the effects of the local riots were manifest in a reinvigorated sense of purpose for the far-right community with a stronger anti-Muslim agenda.

Sustainable addiction recovery is determined in part by how social and community resources can be mobilised to support long-term identity change. Given the current growth in technology, we ask what the role of online social interactions is in supporting long-term identity change for people in recovery. The paper also explores the relationship between the evolution of online social networks and key events that members experience in the outside world, based on a project examining changes in online participation over eight months among members of a UK addiction recovery community built around a social enterprise for employment and housing. The social enterprise had an open Facebook page that was used by staff, clients and by a diverse range of individuals not directly involved in the organisation. Based on an analysis of naturally occurring online data on the Facebook page, social network analysis (SNA) and computerised linguistic analysis that quantified emotion and belonging language in posts and subsequent 'likes', we found that variations in the structure of the online social network and the content of communication are consistent with 'core' members' experience of those events. Our findings indicate that strong recovery networks supported by positive social interactions can contribute to achieving long-term identity change that supports sustaining engagement in recovery communities.