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Emerging communication technologies, and social media platforms in particular, play an increasingly important role
in the radicalization and mobilization processes of violent and non-violent extremists (Archetti, 2015; Cohen et al.,
2014; Farwell, 2014; Klausen, 2015). However, the extent to which extremists utilize social media, and whether it
influences terrorist outcomes, is still not well understood (Conway, 2017). This research brief expands the current
knowledge base by leveraging newly collected data on the social media activities of 479 extremists in the PIRUS
dataset who radicalized between 2005 and 2016.
1 This includes descriptive analyses of the frequency of social
media usage among U.S. extremists, the types of social media platforms used, the differences in the rates of social
media use by ideology and group membership, the purposes of social media use, and the impact of social media on
foreign fighter travel and domestic terrorism plots.

This chapter will examine the role of the Internet and associated technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing (CC) in the process of radicalisation to terrorism and violent extremism. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the role of online environments in facilitating communication and the spread of extremist ideology, as opposed to operational and strategic recruiting functions of the Internet. Before assessing the debate, this chapter shall define two key concepts, radicalisation and violent extremism. Firstly, the chapter will provide an assessment of academic literature that has perpetuated a false offline and online dichotomy. Then, the chapter will demonstrate the new communicative role of technology within violent extremist movements since the emergence of Web 2.0. Following this, Sageman’s (Leaderless Jihad: Terror networks in the twenty-first century, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) ‘bunch of guys’ bottom-up framework will be employed to understand how the process of radicalisation can be facilitated and amplified by the digital age, referring to the concepts of moral outrage, othering, virtual communities and echo chambers. Lastly, contemporary literature that considers the interplay between online and offline domains will be explored.

Terrorism, in all its manifestations, affects us all. The use of the Internet to further terrorist purposes disregards national borders, amplifying the potential impact on victims. By highlighting cases and best practices that respond to this unique challenge, the present publication has two aims: first, to promote a better understanding of the ways in which communications technologies may be misused in furtherance of acts of terrorism and, second, to increase collaboration among Member States, so that effective criminal justice responses to this transnational challenge can be developed.

The twenty-first century’s development of the Internet has led to a significant shift in contemporary communication (Zelin in The state of global jihad online: a qualitative, guantitative, and cross-lingual analysis. New America Foundation, 2013). While the Internet is widely utilised in everyday life to distribute and share information, it has also created an environment in which virtual societies have become a breeding ground for new risks and threats (Hawdon et al. in NORDICOM 3:29–37, 2015). Consequently, terrorist and extremist organisations exploit the accessibility of the Internet to facilitate their violent activities and spread their extremist ideology (Montasari et al. in Privacy, Security and Forensics in the Internet of Things (IoT). Springer International Publishing AG, 2022). This chapter aims to analyse the impact of the Internet on the rise of extremism and terrorism. To this end, the chapter will first investigate the role of the Internet in promoting the online radicalisation process, which leads to participation in terrorist acts. It will then critically examine how the Internet alters the nature of violent extremism, including its fatal consequences in the real world. Finally, the chapter will explore how and for what purposes violent extremists use the Internet, focusing on recruitment through propaganda, training and planning by sharing information, psychological warfare and fundraising.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Operations involving the capture, processing, and transmission of terrorist events, campaigns, or images produce effects well beyond the representational/informational functions of media. This article examines several unspoken effects involved in the mediation of terrorism. We analyze the extent to which several mechanisms and operations of western media may be complicit in, if not fundamental to, the global production and administration of terror, particularly at the level of its image and what we call virality. We theorize the ways in which media not only “mediate” terror, but also function to regulate and/or administer it and, in particular, to exacerbate, amplify, and proliferate images and activities of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) across global networks of digital exchange. We argue that key to understanding the strategies and circulating effects of ISIS’s media involvement is the tendency of viral media operations to overproduce, overextend, and oversaturate. The condition of oversaturation denotes a hyperactive global media circuitry that is collapsing under its own weight. This condition reflects a strategic tendency of terror, which underlies all mediatic processing of images deployed by ISIS. It also reveals a vulnerability for terrorist strategy to exacerbate and exhaust the hyperactivity of media, and thus to accelerate the implosive collapse of the globally networked system. We theorize how implicit and unintended effects or outputs of the mediatic processing of terrorist meanings, images, and discourses may work to overstimulate the global system to the point of its reversal, exhaustion, or implosion.