Representing the West and “Non-Believers” in the Online Jihadist Magazines Dabiq and Inspire
September 18, 2023
This article analyses how jihadist ideology groups discursively represent “the West” and “non-believers” in their online propagandamagazines. In doing so, it contributes to the field of Critical Terrorism Studies conceptually, by considering the voices of violent actors, and methodologically, by illustrating how linguistic tools of enquiry can advance current knowledge of jihadist ideology groups. Our ...
Inception Impact Assessment: Measures to Further Improve the Effectiveness of the Fight against Illegal Content Online
September 18, 2023
This Comment addresses issues unique to potentially terrorist content targeted by Internet platforms’ Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) efforts. It focuses in particular on Islamist extremism, though some of the analysis may be generalized to other contexts. ...
Online Networks of Racial Hate: A Systematic Review of 10 Years of Research on Cyber-Racism
September 18, 2023
The ways in which the Internet can facilitate the expression and spread of racist views and ideologies have been the subject of a growing body of research across disciplines. To date, however, there has been no systematic reviews of this research. To synthesise current knowledge on the topic and identify directions for future research, we ...
The British Hacker Who Became the Islamic State’s Chief Terror CyberCoach: A Profile of Junaid Hussain
September 18, 2023
Until his death in a U.S. drone strike in August 2015, Junaid Hussain was the Islamic State’s most prolific Englishlanguage social media propagandist, working to incite and guide sympathizers in the United Kingdom, United States, and beyond to launch terrorist attacks. Before joining the jihad in Syria, Hussain was part of a hacking collective in ...
The Language of New Terrorism: Differences in Psychological Dimensions of Communication in Dabiq and Inspire
September 18, 2023
We investigate differences in the psychological aspects underpinning Western mobilisation of two terrorist groups by analysing their English-language propaganda. Based on a computerised analysis of the language used in two English-language online magazines circulated by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda (i.e., Dabiq and Inspire), we found significant differences in their language—the ...
An Empirical Study on Collective Online Behaviors of Extremist Supporters
September 18, 2023
Online social media platforms such as Twitter have been found to be misused by extremist groups, including Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who attract and recruit social media users. To prevent their influence from expanding in the online social media platforms, it is required to understand the online behaviors of these extremist group ...
Onlife Extremism: Dynamic Integration of Digital and Physical Spaces in Radicalization
September 18, 2023
This article argues that one should consider online and offline radicalization in an integrated way. Occasionally, the design of some counter-measure initiatives treats the internet and the “real” world as two separate and independent realms. New information communication technologies (ICTs) allow extremists to fuse digital and physical settings. As a result, our research contends that ...
Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime
September 18, 2023
This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime using hand-collected data from Facebook and Twitter. We study the case of Germany, where the recently emerged right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has developed a major social media presence. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that right-wing anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts violent ...
Images of Death and Dying in ISIS Media: A Comparison of English and Arabic Print Publications
September 18, 2023
Images of death and dying in the media around the globe have a symbiotic relationship with nation states as they can bolster state control by defining who has the right to take lives in the interests of the community, by identifying enemies of the state, by demonstrating dominance over enemies, and by lending a moral ...
Music of the Islamic State
September 18, 2023
Anashid – Islamic a cappella songs – figure prominently in the propagandaconsumption habits of the 17 jihadists who have caused casualties in the United States since 2013. ...