Violent Jihadism
Differentiating Al Qaeda and the Islamic State Through Strategies Publicized in Jihadist Magazines
September 18, 2023As Al Qaeda and the Islamic State vie for ascendancy in the jihad movement, policymakers grapple with distinguishing the threat posed by these groups. Proceeding from the terrorists’ view of media as a critical arena of jihad, this study applies content analysis to Al Qaeda- and Islamic State-produced magazines in order to empirically differentiate the ...
“Electronic Jihad”: The Internet as Al Qaeda’s Catalyst for Global Terror
September 18, 2023The Internet has emerged as a key technology for Al Qaeda and other jihadist movements waging their so-called electronic jihad across the Middle East and globally, with digital multiplier effects. This study will examine the evolving doctrine of “electronic jihad” and its impact on the radicalization of Muslims in Western diaspora communities The study describes ...
“Flexible” capital accumulation in Islamic State social media
September 18, 2023This article explores online social media produced by the neo-jihadist group “Islamic State” (IS) from a political-economic perspective. Using a framework developed by anthropologist David Harvey, it examines how IS social media operates within depoliticised neoliberal environments characterised by “flexible” regimes of capital accumulation. It explicates how IS acquires political-economic capital by evoking “spectacle”, “fashion” ...
Check the Web – Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material
September 18, 2023This report assesses the ethics and politics of policing online extremist material, using the normative framework of international human rights law, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights – whilst not conducting a legal analysis. It draws where appropriate upon interpretations by the ...
Occasional Paper – The Islamic State’s Diminishing Returns on Twitter: How suspensions are limiting the social networks of English-speaking ISIS supporters
September 18, 2023Since late 2014, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) social networks on Twitter have been subjected to periodic account suspensions. In a study of metrics for a network of English language ISIS supporters active from June to October 2015, suspensions held the size and reach of the overall network flat, while devastating the reach ...
Preliminary Analytical Considerations In Designing A Terrorism And Extremism Online Network Extractor
September 18, 2023It is now widely understood that extremists use the Internet in attempts to accomplish many of their objectives. In this chapter we present a web-crawler called the Terrorism and Extremism Network Extractor (TENE), designed to gather information about extremist activities on the Internet. In particular, this chapter will focus on how TENE may help differentiate ...
The Discourse of Terror Threats: Assessing Online Written Threats by Nigerian Terrorist Groups
September 18, 2023Online threats by terrorist groups are viewed as a special type of discourse that sends menacing explicit messages, expressing not only an intention to cause a direct physical harm to the threatened, but also to show a commitment to destroy public property or cause a change of system or government. This study applies critical discourse ...
Daily Press Briefing: Haiti, General Assembly, Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Nepal
September 18, 2023Noon Briefing by Stephanie Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary General ...