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Despite great interest in the importance of “narrative” to the global jihadi movement, research on actual examples of jihadi storytelling has been very limited to date. In this paper, I discuss the phenomenon of jihadi storytelling, specifically in digital contexts, focusing on the case study of one storyteller in particular: “Najm al-Din Azad”, a Saudi jihadist who tweeted and blogged a collection of “Tales of the Heroism of the Mujahidin” while participating in the Syrian civil war.

This monograph by RAND surveys social-science literature relating to counterterrorism. It also takes steps toward integrating the knowledge reflected in that literature and suggesting theories and methods to inform analysis and modeling.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Employing social network analysis, this article investigates  the  transnational communication network and discourse of political-Salafists on social media. It examines whether political-Salafists across the MENA region have a common sociopolitical and geopolitical agenda, and whether – given the recent shift of some political-Salafists towards violence – their discourse and communication network can still be distinguished from that of the jihadists. The analysis finds that political-Salafists do not share a common agenda but that their discourse and communication network display three transnational gravity centres: a revisionist, a status quo-oriented and an ostracized pro-Sisi gravity centre. Only the revisionist gravity centre advocates violence. Its discourse, however, remains clearly set apart from that of the jihadists.

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.