Online Library

This study examined the literature on online terrorism studies between 2001 and 2022 and compared themes across journal segments and funded research. The results showed that there is a relationship between funding and the number of publications in recent years. While themes in the core terrorism journals more likely to follow the traditional terrorism studies, funded research (e.g. Computer Science Journals) focus more on social media, far-right groups and hate speech utilizing new research tools such as machine learning and text mining techniques. These new tools enable researchers to study different dimensions of the phenomenon, but these works are not published in terrorism journals. The results also point to a gap between core terrorism journals and Computer Science journals, which heralds at least two potential developments in the future: i) emergence of specialized journals focusing on terrorism and concepts like social media, populism, hate speech, text mining, machine learning and so on; and ii) more collaborative outputs between terrorism researchers and computer scientists.

Recent decades have seen a blurring of the line between extremist movements and mainstream politics, driven by rising sectarian polarization. This development has been linked to digital media, with suggestions that so-called echo chambers may drive political radicalization. To understand the social processes taking place inside such digital spaces, this article draws on Randall Collins and the Durkheimian tradition to develop a theory of discursive community formation. Empirically, we analyze 20 years of discussion on the White Power forum Stormfront, employing natural language processing to study discursive evolution as members become socialized into the community. Our findings suggest that digital media provide space for conversational rituals that instill in people a sense of social membership and intersubjectivity, contained in the elaboration of a shared discourse, within which certain beliefs become sacred and unquestionable. This provides a potential social mechanism linking echo chambers to the rise of sectarian polarization.

This book explores the online strategies and presence of Salafi-Jihadi actors in the Nordic as well as the international context.

Global Salafi-jihadism has been at the epicentre of international focus during the past decade. This book explores how the Swedish and other Nordic Salafi-jihadist sympathisers have used social digital media to radicalise, recruit, and propagate followers in relation to foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and online communities. The chapters in this volume unpack different perspectives of Salafi-jihadi communications strategies, as well as how the international Salafi-jihadi community has constantly reconfigured and adapted to changing security conditions. The case studies of the Nordics constitute a microcosm of wider Salafi-jihadi narratives in relation to the rise and fall of the Islamic State’s so-called ‘digital caliphate’.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, counter-extremism and counter-terrorism, social media and security studies.

This report highlights the networks, supporters, and the platforms of Islamic State disinformation disseminators, focusing on popular social media platforms as well as encrypted messaging applications. These disinformation networks are creating self-branded media outlets with followers in the tens of thousands, and often with innocuous names like “Global Happenings,” “DRIL” and “Media Center,” to evade moderation and takedowns. These same networks use coded language and a codebook of emojis to spread Islamic State “news” to other networks of supporters, who similarly evade moderation. These ‘alternative news outlets’ are trying to outcompete narratives publicized by government officials as well as independent mainstream media and individual journalists – groups that were also heavily targeted by Islamic State.

This three-article dissertation focuses on cyber-related topics on terrorist groups, specifically Jihadists’ use of technology, the application of natural language processing, and social networks in analyzing text data derived from terrorists’ Dark Web forums. The first article explores cybercrime and cyberterrorism. As technology progresses, it facilitates new forms of behavior, including tech-related crimes known as cybercrime and cyberterrorism. In this article, I provide an analysis of the problems of cybercrime and cyberterrorism within the field of criminology by reviewing existing literature focusing on (a) the issues in defining terrorism, cybercrime, and cyberterrorism, (b) ways that cybercriminals commit a crime in cyberspace, and (c) ways that cyberterrorists attack critical infrastructure, including computer systems, data, websites, and servers.

The article explores Far Cry 5’s commentary on the rise of the radical right, domestic terrorism, and extremism in America. The game’s two primary modes for this narrative critique involve its use of Christian symbolism and its exploration of doomsday prepper culture. What emerges from this analysis is that Far Cry 5 provides a harrowing reckoning in the rise of extremist thought in this country and its ramifications, one that is a timely reflection of current American culture. In Far Cry 5, America becomes the next great empire poised to fall throughout the game and finally, in its tense final sequences, succumbs to nuclear annihilation.