This thesis argues that Hamas and the Islamic State, two non-state armed groups located in the Middle East, each carefully calibrate their own war-fighting activities with their communications approaches in order to achieve their respective political objectives. Drawing on scholarship focusing on non-state armed groups and political communication, as well as other secondary sources such ...

Why do ordinary people become supportive of violent, extremist ideologies? Over the past several years, tens of thousands of individuals across the world have become attracted to propaganda disseminated by the Islamic State (ISIS), and many have left their home countries to join the organization. This dissertation closely examines possible explanations for pro-ISIS radicalization in ...

Popular opinion expresses fear that accessing radical Islamic content and connecting with extremist networks through Internet functionalities causes radicalization and recruitment to commit terrorist acts. Anecdotal evidence has been used to support this assertion. The opinion assumes the Internet creates a new path that drives radicalization and recruitment. Whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) and Internet functionalities ...

Through a descriptive and qualitative content analysis of Al-Qaeda videos from 2001 to 2010, this thesis describes how the organization‘s video production has undergone a surge in production quality by using modern technology and skilled recruits. This thesis also provides background on the Islamic culture and the history of Al-Qaeda in order to put into ...

This study identifies and compares the methods of recruitment used by three prime jihadist organizations through their online magazines. The successful recruitment efforts and growth as a threat by the Islamic State of Iraq and Shām (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, and Al-Shabaab are attributed, in part, to the widespread popularity and accessibility of Dabiq and Rumiyah (published ...

Drawing from Life Course Theory (LCT) and General Strain Theory (GST), the current study sought to address the development of negative affect in the online context, specifically whether the turning point of entrance into adulthood was associated with a change in the sentiment expressed online. A mixed-methods approach was employed, whereby 96 individuals were sampled ...

In recent decades, political parties espousing extreme nationalist, xenophobic, and even outright racist platforms have enjoyed variable success in national elections across Europe. While vibrant research literature has sought to better understand the sources of support for such parties, remarkably little attention has been paid to the interplay between parties and the broader social networks ...

Extant literature on White Nationalism illustrates the myriad of social issues members of this racialist extremist group presently recognize as threatening the continuation of the white race and the preservation of white heritage (Swain 2002). One of these threats includes the high incidences of black-on-white violent crime within the United States. The March 2008 murder ...

This research examines the relationship between race and exposure to online hate material. The utilization of websites, weblogs, newsgroups, online games, radio broadcasts, online newsletters and a myriad of other online platforms has proliferated race-based hate groups in the US (Shafer 2002). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the number of hate groups ...

With the popularity and ease of using social media platforms, users are able to, in varying capacities, connect with others in varying capacities. During 2015, there were approximately 305 million worldwide active monthly Twitter users. While Twitter has maintained implementation of their counter-extremism policies, supporters of ISIS have found ways to navigate around them and ...