Chapter

As the field of terrorism studies evolves, there continues to be increasing interest in how the Internet and social media platforms are impacting extremist groups, militant movements, and individual radicalisation to violence. Especially with the rise of the Islamic State, and the migration of tens of thousands of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq, there ...

Approaches for strategically countering or providing alternatives to hate speech and extremism online have evolved substantively in the last ten years. Technological advancement and a generation of young activists who have been socialized as digital natives have facilitated a maelstrom of both hate-based extremist content and attempts to counter this material in different guises and ...

Hate underpins a variety of criminal behaviors, including terrorism, hate crime, and hate speech. However, disciplinary fragmentation has obscured their relationships. This chapter reviews the multidisciplinary research evidence concerning the relationships between terrorism, hate crime, and hate speech. It uncovers the empirical and theoretical knowledge gaps, and it proposes a new theoretical framework—Ecosystems of Hate—which ...

The Internet and online spaces have come to play a significant role in discussions over both terrorism and methods to counter it. Recent events have highlighted the role that such online spaces and networks can play in irregular violence. The growth of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria came with a canon of slick ...

Due to exponential advances in technology, the reach of terrorists’ influence now transcends geographic boundaries and is extremely widespread. Steinbach (2016), in his Statement before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, points out that ‘as technology advances, so, too, does terrorists’ use of technology to communicate – both ...

In this chapter, we explore the communication modes and tactics used by extremists across the ideological spectrum to spread their narratives on social media. We argue that a growing body of evidence suggests that extremist movements across the political spectrum make use of similar communication modes and tactics on social media to reach their objectives. ...

This chapter explores the manner in which extremist groups could use artificial intelligence (AI) in the future to promote their narratives and recruit people to their causes. It looks at four broad use cases, namely generative AI, chat bots, gaming, and predictive analytics, and analyzes how extremists could adapt their propaganda and outreach efforts to ...

This chapter describes four online jihadist magazines: Al-Qaeda’s Inspire, ISIS’s Dabiq and Rumiyah, and Al-Shabaab’s Gaidi Mtaani. Although the publications of these periodicals have ceased, their popularity on the internet continues to influence would-be jihadists and youths. This chapter’s special focus, of course, remains on sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of these magazines is so widespread that anyone with no proclivity ...

This chapter critically examines the role that the Internet and the Internet of Things (IoT) play in violent extremism. The chapter specifically focuses on arguments surrounding radicalisation as a pathway to terrorism and how individuals become radicalised due to different radicalisation processes and theories. Based on this critical analysis, the chapter argues that the Internet ...

Due to recent rises in extremism across the globe (Dean et al. in J Polic Intell Count Terror 11:121–142, 2016; Le Roux in Responding to the rise in violent extremism in the Sahel. Africa Center For Strategic Studies, 2019, p. 26) and (Jones in Int Secur 32:7–40, 2008), governments and law enforcement organisations, such as ...