Brothers in arms: Visual commonalities between US and IS recruitment strategies
September 18, 2023
This article claims that the visual image contributes to, reflects and supports the dominant discourse of two powerful armed groups that have operated in Iraq and Syria: the US military and the Islamic State (IS). This research uses multimodal discourse analysis to explore two crucial insights into the ideological power of the visual image: the ...
Global Jihad and International Media Use
September 18, 2023
Globalization and international media are potent contributors to the rise of the Islamist global jihad. Widespread digital communication technologies that connect people all over the world are a substantial component of globalization. Over the past three decades, “virtual jihad” has emerged as a potent disseminator of radical religious-political ideologies, instilling fear and fostering instability worldwide. ...
Islam, Jihad, and Terrorism in Post‐9/11 Arabic Discussion Boards
September 18, 2023
This study analyzed the contents of three of the most popular Arabic‐language online message boards regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States. Although terrorists claimed that the attacks were committed in the name of Islam, those who posted messages on all three forums rejected this claim. More than 43% of the ...
Prevalent Sentiments of the Concept of Jihad in the Public Commentsphere
September 18, 2023
Certain studies of social conflicts and geopolitical processes through online social networks entail qualitative analysis. One such issue is the tension between Western and Muslim societies. We introduce computer-assisted qualitative sentiment analysis for the inquiry and extraction of varied sentiments. The analysis explores the prevalent meanings of the term jihad through discussions of Muslims and ...
A Comparative Analysis Of Right-wing Radical And Islamist Communities’ Strategies For Survival In Social Networks: Evidence From The Russian Social Network Vkontakte
September 18, 2023
This article presents a comparative analysis of online communities of right-wing radicals and Islamists, who are considered to be numerous and dangerous extremist groups in Russian society. The online communities were selected based on the content posted on the largest Russian social networking site VKontakte. The goal of this article is to determine the strategy and ...
Livestreaming the ‘wretched of the Earth’: The Christchurch massacre and the ‘death-bound subject’
September 18, 2023
The livestreaming of terror, its co-production through live consumption and the massacre of lives as ‘entertainment’ propelled us into another long abyss of ethical challenges in the case of the xenophobic terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. Livestreaming, as part of the convergence of technologies, enables narration in ‘real’ time, dragging us into ...
Far-Right Terrorism: The Christchurch Attack and Potential Implications on the Asia Pacific Landscape
September 18, 2023
The terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand is a landmark in far-right terrorist behaviour within the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The Australian far-right terrorist held both domestic and transitional connections to other far-right extremist groups and travelled extensively before committing the attack in New Zealand. The assailant’s proficiency with weaponry and technology is considerable, as ...
Tweeting to Win: Al-Shabaab’s Strategic Use of Microblogging
September 18, 2023
Today, we live in a world of networked global communities, drawn together by the recent technological boom. This unprecedented degree of interconnectivity has affected every size and kind of social organization, from the American government to a camera-armed protester on the streets. Technology has particularly changed the fabric of the Islamic world, a community torn ...
Cybercortical Warfare: Hizbollah’s Internet Strategy
September 18, 2023
The acceleration of the historical tempo and the move from hierarchical to networked conceptions of power is disintegrating the mechanisms of control and political representation at the disposal of the state. The upshot of this is that ‘resistance confronts domination, empowerment reacts against powerlessness, and alternative projects challenge the logic embedded in the new global ...
Arab Foreign Fighters in Bosnia – the Roads to Europe
September 18, 2023
Discussion of how the war in the Balkans (1992-95) attracted the attention of Muslim foreign fighters, who had mostly participated in a proclaimed defensive-jihad against communist occupation forces in Afghanistan. Chapter in Gunther Hauser, Franz Kernic & Sven Gareis, ‘The European Union: A global actor?’, ...