Radical Reddits: into the Minds of Online Radicalised Communities.
September 18, 2023
The online domain potentially provides research with a vast body of data. The big quest within contemporary research is to make sense of all this data. A possibility to handle such data is by combining methods from the fields of new media and linguistics. Several studies have sought to understand how radicalism online comes to ...
Violent Extremism Online: New Perspectives on Terrorism and the Internet
September 18, 2023
This book explores the interface between terrorism and the internet and presents contemporary approaches to understanding violent extremism online. The volume focuses on four issues in particular: terrorist propaganda on the internet; radicalisation and the internet; counter campaigns and approaches to disrupting internet radicalisation; and approaches to researching and understanding the role of the internet ...
Quantifying Salient Concepts Discussed in Social Media Content: A Case Study using Twitter Content Written by Radicalized Youth
September 18, 2023
Social Media has become an important source for information about people and real-world events. Its importance is driven largely by the enormous number of people generating and updating content in Social Media platforms. In this report, we measure the extent to which we can accurately measure the salience of topics/concepts that might be of interest ...
#IS_Fangirl: Exploring a New Role for Women in Terrorism
September 18, 2023
In this paper we present initial results from an ongoing study of women affiliated with pro-IS networks on Twitter and other social media. Our particular focus is on 20 accounts belonging to individual identified as ‘fan girls.’ Drawing on an analysis of Twitter posts from these 20 accounts, we identify key characteristics of the fan ...
Domestic Terrorism, Cyber-Radicalization, and American College Students
September 18, 2023
Since 9/11, there has been an increase in domestic terrorism inspired by the Global Salafi Jihad ideology. Some of the individuals who undergo radicalization are U.S. college and university students. Radicalization is promoted on the Internet in ways that appeal to the young and impact those who are searching for their identities, their places in ...
An Approach for Dynamic Identification of Online Radicalization in Social Networks
September 18, 2023
The Online Social Network (OSN) has evolved as a popular platform enabling rich topic-centric interactions and serving as a medium to facilitate online radicalization (Behr et al. 2013). Keeping in view the growing need of uncovering online radicalization, we focus on the information network of Twitter and present an approach for identifying dynamic communities, which ...
Topic-Specific YouTube Crawling to Detect Online Radicalization
September 18, 2023
Online video sharing platforms such as YouTube contains several videos and users promoting hate and extremism. Due to low barrier to publication and anonymity, YouTube is misused as a platform by some users and communities to post negative videos disseminating hatred against a particular religion, country or person. We formulate the problem of identification of ...
Online Radicalisation: The Net or the Netizen?
September 18, 2023
Radicalisation has gained some unusual prominence in the academic circles; maintaining a generic existence not only in the political sector. And with the advent of the Information Communication Technology (ICT), radicalisation has begun to have some virtual dimension even in the remotest of human communities. This study seeks to mobilise a universal awareness on the ...
From al-Zarqawi to al-Awlaki: The Emergence and Development of an Online Radical Milieu
September 18, 2023
Radical milieus have been described as specific social environ¬ments whose culture, narratives, and symbols shape both individuals and groups, and the social networks and relationships out of which those individuals and groups develop and emerge. Researcher Peter Waldmann and his co-authors attribute distinct and independent qualities to these environments, portraying them as social entities in ...
Anders Behring Breivik’s use of the Internet and social media
September 18, 2023
Did the Internet play a decisive role in Anders Behring Breivik’s violent radicalization? It has proven difficult to understand if and how the Internet influences radicalization processes leading to political violence (Conway 2012). The Internet constitutes only one out of a wide range of factors with a potential influence on radical and violent behavior. We ...