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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.

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.

‘Jihadism’ (also known as the jihadi movement) is a popular term that signifies the Islamic terror movement which thrives on extremist ideologies and violence. In addition to the conventional practices, the online medium is currently being employed for disseminating these extremist ideologies across the globe. Radicalisation and recruitment of geographically dispersed individuals as ‘jihadists’ for supporting Islamic terror activities tend to be the primary intent for using the digital platforms as the medium of communication in this context. One such initiative by the Lashkar-e-Taiba of Jammu and Kashmir was the release of the ‘Wyeth: The Resistance in Flow’, an e-magazine which was launched on April 2018. The first issue which was posted with an open access option was primarily designed to influence the Indian youth population through the radical interpretations of Islam. Hence, it is crucial to analyse and understand the jihadi discourse of the Wyeth magazine in order to curb and counter-attack such initiatives at its initial phase. For this purpose, the present study aims to examine the content of the Wyeth magazine and analyse the basic traits of the jihadi propaganda and its potential to aid in the self-radicalisation process.

Proliferation of social media platforms in recent past has resulted into upsurge in the number of users. Advent of these sites have paved way for the users to easily express share and communicate. In such a scenario, it is imperative to analyze the content and identify nasty content so as to avoid unpleasant situations. Machine learning techniques are extensively used for this purpose. In this paper, we propose a language model for the identification of hate speech in twitter data. Distil-BERT, a context aware embedding model along with Support Vector Machine (SVM) for the classification of hate speech has been used. SVM with a 10-fold cross validation and linear kernel has been found to provide better accuracy as compared to existing models. Results show that accuracy is improved with the use of context aware embedding model.

The Internet has made it possible for people to access just about any information they could possibly want. Conversely, it has given organizations a vehicle through which they can get their message out to a large audience. Hate groups have found the Internet particularly appealing, because they are able to get their uncensored message out to an unlimited number of people (ADL 2005). This is an issue that is not likely to go away.

This paper uses a computer-based frequency analysis to present an ideological discourse analysis of extremist ideologies in Daesh discourse. More specifically, by using a computer-assisted text analysis, the paper attempts to investigate the hidden extremist ideologies beyond the discourse of the first issue of Rumiyah, one of the main digital publications of Daesh. The paper’s main objectives are to expose hidden ideologies beyond the mere linguistic form of discourse, to offer better linguistic understanding of the manipulative use of language in religious discourse, and to highlight the relevance of using a computer-based frequency analysis to discourse studies and corpus linguistics. The paper also employs van Dijk’s ideological discourse analysis, by adopting his positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation strategies. Findings reveal that Daesh discourse in Rumiyah is rhetorically structured to hide the manipulative ideologies of its users, which in turn functions to reformulate the social, political and religious attitudes of its readers.