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ABSTRACT- The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical assessment of the way in which the internet and online material features as part of the process individuals embark on to plan acts of terrorism. The paper begins by evaluating concepts used to describe the role of the internet in the context of terrorism and political violence before analysing a single case study in detail in order to explore particular nuances that emerge which shed light on the relationship between perpetrator on the one hand and online content and behaviour on the other. The case study, in turn, is developed into a conceptual appraisal of terrorist use of the internet. The paper concludes by exploring the important distinction between the “theoretical” application of online learning as set out in terrorist propaganda and the hurdles that individuals face in practice.

The approach from the far-right in producing and disseminating visual propaganda has allowed for a persistent online presence to be maintained, despite efforts to remove extremist and hateful content. This chapter will critically explore the academic literature which considers how far-right actors are taking advantages of the affordances of online communication routes to spread visual propaganda. Three key strategies which emerge from the literature will be critically discussed to understand the role of visual imagery in facilitating and maintaining far-right online discourse. Firstly, the use of imagery to other out-groups through boundary construction will be considered. From understanding how such representations drive online engagement, the second strategy of image and information manipulation will be discussed. This strategy will consider how the far-right take advantage of social media systems to garner more visibility through manipulating and framing imagery. Lastly, considerations will be made towards how humour through meme images and board subculture have been used as a strategy to lower the boundary for the participation in extremist ideology.

Cyberterrorism has not occurred. Furthermore, the definitional parameters of cyberterrorism have not been conclusively defined by either policymakers or academia. However, in 2010 the threat posed by the terrorist application of cyber weaponry to target British critical national infrastructure became a ‘Tier One’ threat to the UK. This thesis is the first comprehensive mapping and analysis of the official British construction of the threat of cyberterrorism between 12th May 2010 and 24th June 2016. By using interpretive discourse analysis, this thesis identifies ‘strands’ from a comprehensive corpus of policy documents, statements and speeches from Ministers, MPs and Peers. This thesis examines how the threat of cyberterrorism was constructed in the UK, and what this securitisation has made possible. In addition, this thesis makes novel contributions to the Copenhagen School’s ‘securitisation theory’ framework. Accordingly: this thesis outlines the framework for a ‘tiered’, rather than monolithic audience; refines the ‘temporal’ and ‘spatial’ conditioning of a securitisation with reference to the unique characteristics of cyberterrorism; and lastly, details the way in which popular fiction can be ascribed agency in securitising moves to ‘fill in’ a lack of case studies of threat with gripping vicarious fictional narratives. It is identified that the 2010 British Coalition Government’s classification of cyberterrorism as a ‘Tier One’ threat created a central strand upon which a discursive securitisation was established. Despite the absence of a ‘cyberterrorist’ incident across the period under scrutiny, the securitisation did not recede. The threat posed by cyberterrorism was articulated partially within a ‘New Terrorism’ frame, and it was deemed by Ministers, MPs and Lords to be a threat that was likely to escalate in both severity and possibility over time. A notable finding is the positioning of the securitisation against a particular ‘cyberterrorist’ identity epitomised by social actors using cyberspace, rather than the tangible environments of cyberspace.

Social media’s role in the spread and evolution of extremism is a focus of intense study. Online extremists have been involved in the spread of online hate, mis/disinformation, and real-world violence. However, the overwhelming majority of existing work has focused on right-wing extremism. In this paper, we perform a first of its kind large-scale, data-driven study exploring left-wing extremism. We focus on “tankies,” a left-wing community that first arose in the 1950s in support of hardline actions of the USSR and has evolved to support what they call “actually existing socialist countries,” e.g., CCP run China, the USSR, former soviet countries, and North Korea. We collect 1.3M posts from 53K authors from tankies subreddits, and explore the position of tankies within the broader far-left community on Reddit. Among other things, we find that tankies are clearly on the periphery of the larger far-left community. When examining the contents of posts, we find misalignments and conceptual homomorphisms that confirm the description of tankies in the theoretical work. We also discover that tankies focus more on state-level political events rather than social issues in comparison to other far-left communities. Finally, we show that tankies exhibit some of the same worrying behaviors as right-wing extremists, e.g., relatively high toxicity and an organized response to deplatforming events.

The incel (involuntary celibate) community is an extremist online community that practices intense misogyny, racism, and that glorifies – and sometimes practices – violence. Work to understand the dynamics within incel communities has been hindered by the fact that these communities are spread over many platforms and many of the more popular forums of the past have been banned and their content deleted. In this paper, we present two main contributions. First, we introduce a carefully reconstructed, nearly complete archive of incel forums dating back to 2016, including millions of posts that can no longer be accessed. Then we illustrate a technique for identifying community-specific language and using that as a marker of extremism to track radicalization over time.

The counter-jihad scene can be understood variously as a collection of parties, pundits, and movements all linked by a common belief that the West is being subjected to takeover by Muslims. In this article, I seek to improve academic understanding of this collection of movements, parties, and ideas by analyzing the discourse presented by a collection of online advocates whom I describe as the counter-jihad nebula. The findings suggest a need to at least partially re-evaluate the role of the nebula within the wider counter-jihad scene as well as the relationship between the wider counter-jihad scene and mainstream political discourse as expressed through various media outlets.