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This paper presents a review of recent academic scholarship and debates on cyber terrorism, and more broadly of what is known about terrorist’s direct use of the Internet as weapon and, less directly, as a communication device. It presents an overview of a field of discourse that has, since its inception, provided a number of foreboding and even doomsday warnings about the future of cyber terrorism, which in the main have failed to come to realization. First, it surveys why these gloomy warnings regarding future proliferation of cyber terrorism have not been born out in practice, and explains that rather than looking for instances of the Internet being used directly as a weapon by terrorists, current debates in academic and policy circles have shifted to trying to measure and ascertain the role that the Internet plays in spreading and supporting extremist discourse to ever wider audiences. It continues by posing a series of questions regarding online audiences that are in need of future research if we are to better understand the role of the Internet in spreading and supporting violent extremist discourse and cultivating terrorism, most importantly the role of audiences as autonomous agents in navigating, reacting and responding to online violent extremist materials.

The advent of social media platforms has created an online environment that transcends geographic and political boundaries as well as traditional mechanisms of state-based authority. The decentralised nature of social media and its ability to disseminate content anonymously and to reach wide audiences has afforded violent extremist groups opportunities to further propaganda, recruitment, radicalisation, fundraising and operational planning. This paper examines three violent extremist-related groups operating in Asia Pacific: one ‘classic’ terrorist – Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines; one a dissident political party – Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh; and one a broad ethno-religious separatist movement – the Uyghurs in China. Each study highlights how the adoption of proactive social media strategies affords the group numerous opportunities to maximise their reach, impact and effect. However, the same technological specificities that generate these possibilities also expose the groups to new vulnerabilities and risks.

The project Mapping Networks and Narratives of Online Right-Wing Extremists in New South Wales (NSW) used the systematic mining and analysis of online data to generate evidence-based insights into online right-wing extremism (RWE) across the state. The project was conducted between July 2019 and February 2020 with data collection occurring from August to November 2019. The project addressed three key areas:

– What is the nature of the online RWE environment in NSW?
– How are themes and narratives framed in different online contexts in order to mobilise support?
– What level of risk does the online RWE environment pose?

The research areas were framed as broad questions to facilitate wide exploratory research into the online RWE movement in NSW, a milieu that has been little studied. This breadth of scope was considered pertinent in the wake of the March 2019 mass casualty terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an attacker originating from NSW.

Video platforms such as YouTube provide an environment where the blurred duality between content dissemination and creation facilitates the generation of social networks. Research into online violent extremist environments has often noted the prominence of video-sharing platforms as a means of distributing propaganda and cultivating social networks for purposes of recruitment. This paper draws from the study of emotion to examine three videos and associated comments that had high engagement, understood as the frequency of interactions, likes/upvotes and reposts in a given social network, in a right-wing extremist online milieu. This analysis highlights the important role emotions play in generating social connectedness and ultimately engagement and recruitment into online right-wing extremist milieus. Understanding the significance of emotions in online violent extremist video content can help to identify opportunities for moderation and/or the construction of alternative narratives.

Video platforms such as YouTube provide an environment where the blurred duality between content dissemination and creation facilitates the generation of social networks. Research into online violent extremist environments has often noted the prominence of video-sharing platforms as a means of distributing propaganda and cultivating social networks for purposes of recruitment. This paper draws from the study of emotion to examine three videos and associated comments that had high engagement, understood as the frequency of interactions, likes/upvotes and reposts in a given social network, in a right-wing extremist online milieu. This analysis highlights the important role emotions play in generating social connectedness and ultimately engagement and recruitment into online right-wing extremist milieus. Understanding the significance of emotions in online violent extremist video content can help to identify opportunities for moderation and/or the construction of alternative narratives.

This Element presents original research into how young people interact with violent extremist material, including terrorist propaganda, when online. It explores a series of emotional and behavioural responses that challenge assumptions that terror or trauma are the primary emotional responses to these online environments. It situates young people’s emotional responses within a social framework, revealing them to have a relatively sophisticated relationship with violent extremism on social media that challenges simplistic concerns about processes of radicalisation. The Element draws on four years of research, including quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups with young people, and presents a unique perspective drawn from young people’s experiences.