Chapter
Cyber Dimensions of Terrorism Funding
December 3, 2024The nature of terrorism financing has evolved with the exponential development and expansion of the internet. This dimension of terrorism funding has become a critical source for terrorist organisational mobilisation. The cyber funding of terrorism has coincided with the remarkable technological progress that has been achieved in the last few decades. This chapter provides a ...
Social Media Intelligence to Combat Extremist and Terrorist Support: Can an Orthodox Focus on Unlawful Groups Survive in the Era of QAnon, Anti-vax Conspiracy Belief, and Stop the Steal?
December 3, 2024It has become a familiar observation that social media usage can afford material assistance to the advancement of violent extremist or terrorist causes and can be a tool for counter-extremism and counter-terrorism efforts. This chapter discusses how several core supporting pillars of extremism mesh with social media in apparently similar ways to non-extremist activity and ...
Social Media and Terrorist Financing
December 3, 2024Social media and terrorist financing (SMTF) refers to how terror organisations (TO), sometimes called violent extremist organisations (VEOs), have exploited free social media platforms to raise money for terrorism/fighting/jihad, to recruit, train, equip, and transport fighters, to support extremist religious proto-states (e.g., Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]), to market/brand an organisation including to ...
Counter-narratives and strategic communications, offline and online
November 12, 2024Counter-radicalisation is resource-hungry; policy development and implementation, interventions through the criminal justice system, and bespoke one-to-one engagements outside of it are all costly. In contrast, counter narrative campaigns ostensibly offer a simpler proposition. By engaging with various audiences, campaigners from both the state and civil society can seek to reduce the number of people turning ...
Content moderation: Social media and countering online radicalisation
November 12, 2024As terrorist, extremist, and hateful content has become widespread on social media, platforms have responded with content moderation – the flagging, review, and enforcement of rules and standards on user-generated content online. This chapter provides an introduction to contemporary content moderation practices, technologies, and contexts and outlines key debates in the field. The chapter explores ...
Belonging is just a click away: Extremism, radicalisation, and the role of online communities
October 30, 2024As 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 ...
The Future of Counterspeech: Effective Framing, Targeting, and Evaluation
October 30, 2024Approaches 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 ...
Ecosystems of Hate: understanding the relationship between terrorism, hate crime, and hate speech
October 24, 2024Hate 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 ...
Cyber Counter-Terrorism: States, Security Services, and Investigations in the Digital Age
October 24, 2024The 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 ...
Turning to Terror Online: Social Media, Recruitment, and Radicalization
October 24, 2024Due 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 ...