Countering and Understanding Terrorism Extremism and Radicalisation in a Big Data Age
September 18, 2023
Anno Bunnik explores the ramifications of Big Data for countering terrorism, extremism, and radicalisation. With the recent rise of jihadists and other extremists groups in the Middle East and Europe, how do state agencies respond through the use of Big Data? This chapter critically engages with questions such as the extent to which Big Data ...
Literature Review: The Impact of Digital Communications Technology on Radicalisation and Recruitment
September 18, 2023
This literature review seeks to reorient the discourse on radicalization to consider the connection between communication technology and violent extremism. By interrogating three central questions vexing policy-makers, law enforcement officials and academics, this review moves away from a monolithic understanding of the internet and showcases the opportunities afforded by different communications technologies within the context ...
Virtual Jihadist Media: Function, Legitimacy, and Radicalising Efficacy.
September 18, 2023
Within the last 10 years, the internet has become the principal platform for the dissemination and mediation of the culture and ideology of jihadism. The exponential growth of jihadist fora, with their increasingly ‘high-end’ production values, sophisticated critiques of prevailing narratives and ostensive attempts at impartiality, do not occur in a vacuum. To a great ...
How the U.S. is Countering the Islamic Extremist Propaganda Machine
September 18, 2023
President Obama reiterated his promise to destroy the virulent Islamic State Tuesday while talking about the Orlando mass shooting — and how gunman Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen, may have been radicalized by online extremist propaganda. NewsHour producer P.J. Tobia reports on U.S. efforts to win the hearts and minds that the terrorists are trying ...
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 ...