Report |
Protecting the Homeland from International and Domestic Terrorism Threats
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This paper collection entitled “Protecting the Homeland from International and Domestic Terrorism Threats: Current Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Root Causes, the Role of Ideology, and Programs for Counter-radicalization and Disengagement”, seeks to add insights without needlessly repeating what has been heard and read elsewhere. What separates this paper collection from the many others on this topic is the multiplicity of perspectives represented, both domestic and international, that span the spectrum of social sciences. To do this, over forty authors were asked to provide perspectives on various aspects of terrorism: root causes, dynamics of Violent Non-State Actors (VNSAs), the role of ideology in terrorism, and potential solutions for counter-radicalization, deradicalization, and disengagement from terrorism.
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2010 |
Kuznar, L., Fenstermacher, L., Reiger, T. and Speckhard, A. |
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Journal Article |
PROTOCOL: What are the effects of different elements of media on radicalization outcomes? A systematic review
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Objectives: In this systematic review and meta analysis we will collate and synthesize the evidence on media‐effects for radicalization, focusing on both cognitive
and behavioral outcomes. The goal is to identify the relative magnitudes of the effects for different mediums, types of content, and elements of human‐media
relationships.
Methodology: Random‐effects meta analysis will be used and the results will be rank‐ordered according to the size of the pooled estimates for the different factors.
Meta‐regressions, moderator analysis, and sub‐group analyses will be used to investigate sources of heterogeneity.
Implications: The results of this review will provide a better understanding of the relative magnitude of the effects of media‐related factors. This information should
help the development of more evidence‐based policies.
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2021 |
Wolfowicz, M., Hasisi, B. and Weisburd, D. |
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Journal Article |
Prototype and Analytics for Discovery and Exploitation of Threat Networks on Social Media
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Identifying and profiling threat actors are high priority tasks for a number of governmental organizations. These threat actors may operate actively, using the Internet to promote propaganda, recruit new members, or exert command and control over their networks. Alternatively, threat actors may operate passively, demonstrating operational security awareness online while using their Internet presence to gather information they need to pose an offline physical threat. This paper presents a flexible new prototype system that allows analysts to automatically detect, monitor and characterize threat actors and their networks using publicly available information. The proposed prototype system fills a need in the intelligence community for a capability to automate manual construction and analysis of online threat networks. Leveraging graph sampling approaches, we perform targeted data collection of extremist social media accounts and their networks. We design and incorporate new algorithms for role classification and radicalization detection using insights from social science literature of extremism. Additionally, we develop and implement analytics to facilitate monitoring the dynamic social networks over time. The prototype also incorporates several novel machine learning algorithms for threat actor discovery and characterization, such as classification of user posts into discourse categories, user post summaries and gender prediction.
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2019 |
Simek, O., Shah, D. and Heier, A. |
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Journal Article |
Psychology and morality of political extremists: evidence from Twitter language analysis of alt-right and Antifa
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The recent rise of the political extremism in Western countries has spurred renewed interest in the psychological and moral appeal of political extremism. Empirical support for the psychological explanation using surveys has been limited by lack of access to extremist groups, while field studies have missed psychological measures and failed to compare extremists with contrast groups. We revisit the debate over the psychological and moral appeal of extremism in the U.S. context by analyzing Twitter data of 10,000 political extremists and comparing their text-based psychological constructs with those of 5000 liberal and 5000 conservative users. The results reveal that extremists show a lower positive emotion and a higher negative emotion than partisan users, but their differences in certainty is not significant. In addition, while left-wing extremists express more language indicative of anxiety than liberals, right-wing extremists express lower anxiety than conservatives. Moreover, our results mostly lend support to Moral Foundations Theory for partisan users and extend it to the political extremists. With the exception of ingroup loyalty, we found evidences supporting the Moral Foundations Theory among left- and right-wing extremists. However, we found no evidence for elevated moral foundations among political extremists.
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2019 |
Alizadeh, M., Weber, I., Cioffi-Revilla, C., Fortunato, S. and Macy, M. |
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Lecture |
Public Lecture by VOX-Pol Research Fellow Nico Prucha: Understanding the ‘Islamic State’ Narratives
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Dr Prucha discusses how to understand ‘Islamic State’ narratives by analysing their media output. The lecture was organised by VOX-Pol partner institute, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and held at King’s College London on 6 July 2015. It focuses on the symbiotic relationships between ideology, media content and strategic action, and on how different messages are targeted at different audiences, was broadcast live on Periscope to wide enthusiasm.
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2015 |
Prucha, N. |
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Journal Article |
Public support for counterterrorism efforts using probabilistic computing technologies to decipher terrorist communication on the internet
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Advancements in big data analytics offer new avenues for the analysis and deciphering of suspicious activities on the internet. One promising new technology to increase the identification of terrorism threats is based on probabilistic computing. The technology promises to provide more efficient problem solutions in encryption and cybersecurity. Probabilistic computing technologies use large amounts of data, though, which raises potential privacy concerns. A study (N = 1,023) was conducted to survey public support for using probabilistic computing technologies to increase counterterrorism efforts. Overall, strong support was found for the use of publicly available personal information (e.g., personal websites). Regarding private personal information (e.g., online conversations), respondents perceived it to be more appropriate to use information from out-group members (non-American citizens) than from in-group members (American citizens). In line with a social-identity account, this form of in-group favoritism was strongest among respondents displaying a combination of strong national identities and strong privacy concerns.
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2022 |
Reimer, T. and Johnson, N. |
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