Researchers across the world are increasingly finding ways in which the coronavirus pandemic changed us. As more data comes in, what impact have lockdowns and their aftermath had on the spread of extremism?
The United Nations painted a sobering picture of how the pandemic has fuelled terrorism and violent extremism, in a report last year.
Heavy-handed enforcement of Covid restrictions, growing economic inequalities and an "erosion of trust in government", coupled with a diversion of resources away from fighting terrorism, were among the factors driving the change, according to the UN.
Jacob Davey, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a UK counter-extremism think tank, also identified "quite significant spikes in extremist activity and also conspiracy theories" during the pandemic.
"It might be people spending more time on their computer," he says, but there was also "a heightened sense of anxiety". Conspiratorial views and talking points "provide easy answers" to people who are worried, he argues.
He singles out messaging app and social network Telegram - which grew rapidly during the pandemic and claims to have more than 500,000 members around the world - as a hub for "disinformation through to conspiracy theories, through to terrorist activity".
Easily searchable groups on Telegram mean more extreme networks can feed into seemingly innocent groups.
"There's still a large amount of extremist content, still a large amount of disinformation content,...
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