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This report contains findings from the Advanced Research Workshop supported by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme on terrorists’ use of the Internet, held at Dublin City University on 27th-29th June 2016. The event was co-organised by the Cyberterrorism Project and the VOX-POL Network of Excellence. The workshop consisted of a total of 31 presentations, followed by a roundtable discussion during which participants formulated a set of recommendations. 60 delegates attended the symposium, from 13 different countries, including researchers and representatives from NATO HQ, NATO CCD-COE, UNICRI, the European Defence Agency, the Bavarian Police Academy and the Italian Carabinieri. This report provides summaries of each of the presentations and presents the workshop’s final recommendations.

This report seeks to contribute to public and policy debates on the value of social media disruption activity with respect to terrorist material. We look in particular at aggressive account and content takedown, with the aim of accurately measuring this activity and its impacts. Our findings challenge the notion that Twitter remains a conducive space for Islamic State (IS) accounts and communities to flourish, although IS continues to distribute propaganda through this channel. However, not all jihadists on Twitter are subject to the same high levels of disruption as IS, and we show that there is differential disruption taking place. IS’s and other jihadists’ online activity was never solely restricted to Twitter. Twitter is just one node in a wider jihadist social media ecology. We describe and discuss this, and supply some preliminary analysis of disruption trends in this area.

This article contributes to public and policy debates on the value of social media disruption activity with respect to terrorist material. In particular, it explores aggressive account and content takedown, with the aim of accurately measuring this activity and its impacts. The major emphasis of the analysis is the so-called Islamic State (IS) and disruption of their online activity, but a catchall “Other Jihadi” category is also utilized for comparison purposes. Our findings challenge the notion that Twitter remains a conducive space for pro-IS accounts and communities to flourish. However, not all jihadists on Twitter are subject to the same high levels of disruption as IS, and we show that there is differential disruption taking place. IS’s and other jihadists’ online activity was never solely restricted to Twitter; it is just one node in a wider jihadist social media ecology. This is described and some preliminary analysis of disruption trends in this area supplied too.

This article contributes to the growing literature on extremist and terrorist online ecologies and approaches to snapshotting these. It opens by measuring Twitter’s differential disruption of so-called “Islamic State” versus other jihadi parties to the Syria conflict, showing that while Twitter became increasingly inhospitable to IS in 2017 and 2018, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham retained strong communities on the platform during the same period. An analysis of the same groups’ Twitter out-linking activity has the twofold purpose of determining the reach of groups’ content by quantifying the number of platforms it was available on and analyzing the nature and functionalities of the online spaces out-linked to.

Terrorist use of the Internet has become a focus of media, policy, and scholarly attention in recent years. Terrorists use the Internet in a variety of ways, the most important being for propaganda purposes and operations-related content, but it is also potentially a means or target of attack. This book presents revised versions of a selection of papers delivered at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on ‘Terrorists’ Use of the Internet’ held in Dublin, Ireland in June 2016. One aim of the workshop was to nurture dialogue between members of the academic, policy and practitioner communities, so the 60 delegates from 13 countries who attended the workshop included representatives from each of these. The participants encompassed a wide range of expertise (including engineering, computer science, law, criminology, political science, international relations, history, and linguistics) and the chapters contained herein reflect these diverse professional and disciplinary backgrounds. The workshop also aimed to address the convergence of threats. Following an introduction which provides an overview of the various ways in which terrorists use the Internet, the book’s remaining 25 chapters are grouped into 5 sections on cyber terrorism and critical infrastructure protection; cyber-enabled terrorist financing; jihadi online propaganda; online counterterrorism; and innovative approaches and responses. The book will be of interest to all those who need to maintain an awareness of the ways in which terrorists use the Internet and require an insight into how the threats posed by this use can be countered.

Magnanville, 13 June, 2016, around 8pm: policeman, Jean-Baptiste Salvaing has been stabbed to death outside his home. Forcing his way into the house, the attacker murders Jessica Schneider, who also worked for the police, by cutting her throat. The couple’s three year-old son is taken hostage by the killer, Larossi Abballa. Prior to a three hour stand-off with police negotiators, Aballa turns to social media to broadcast and justify his actions, dedicating them to his ‘Emir’ Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (Hume et al 2016). It is the first time a terrorist has used a live-streaming service in the midst of an attack. It is unlikely to be the last.