Online Library

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has received a tremendous amount of media coverage in the past few years for their successful use of social media to spread their message and to recruit new members. In this work, we leverage access to the full Twitter Firehose to perform a large-scale observational study of one year of ISIS social activity. We quantify the size of ISIS presence on Twitter, the potential amount of support it received, and its collective influence over time. We find that ISIS was able to gain a relatively limited portion from the total influence mass on Twitter and that this influence diminished over time. In addition, ISIS showed a tendency towards attracting interactions from
other similar pro-ISIS accounts, while inviting only a limited anti-ISIS sentiment. We find that 75% of the interactions ISIS received on Twitter in 2015 actually came from eventually suspended accounts and that only about 8% of the interactions they received were anti-ISIS. In addition, we have created a unique dataset of 17 million ISIS-related tweets posted in 2015 which we make available for research purposes upon request.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Analyses of extremist video messages typically focus on their discursive content. Using the case of ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), this study instead draws upon the emerging subfield of genosonic analysis to understand the allure of extremist videos, as well as the ineffectiveness of US video messages designed to ‘counter violent extremism’ (CVE). Through a genosonic analysis of three high-profile ISIL videos and five popular US State Department CVE videos, the study advances two concepts – sonorous communality and sonic unmaking – to help explain ISIL’s appeal. The lack of equivalent dimensions in US CVE videos renders them sonically sterile in comparison to those of ISIL. The implications of this analysis for scholarship and practice conducted at the intersection of media, war and conflict are discussed.

Analyses of extremist video messages typically focus on their discursive content. Using the case of ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), this study instead draws upon the emerging subfield of genosonic analysis to understand the allure of extremist videos, as well as the ineffectiveness of US video messages designed to ‘counter violent extremism’ (CVE). Through a genosonic analysis of three high-profile ISIL videos and five popular US State Department CVE videos, the study advances two concepts – sonorous communality and sonic unmaking – to help explain ISIL’s appeal. The lack of equivalent dimensions in US CVE videos renders them sonically sterile in comparison to those of ISIL. The implications of this analysis for scholarship and practice conducted at the intersection of media, war and conflict are discussed.

Since emerging in academic literature in the 1990s, definitions of ‘cyber war’ and cyber warfare’ have been notably inconsistent. There has been no research that examines these inconsistencies and whether they can be resolved. Using the methodology of discourse analysis, this thesis addresses this research need. Analysis has identified that the study of cyber war and cyber warfare is inherently interdisciplinary. The most prominent academic disciplines contributing definitions are Strategic Studies, Security Studies, Information and Communications Technology, Law, and Military Studies. Despite the apparent definitional uncertainty, most researchers do not offer formal definitions of cyber war or cyber warfare. Moreover, there is little evidentiary basis in literature to distinguish between cyber war and cyber warfare. Proximate analysis of definitions of cyber war and cyber warfare suggests a high level of inconsistency between dozens of definitions. However, through deeper analysis of both the relationships between definitions and their underlying structure, this thesis demonstrates that (a) the relationships between definitions can be represented hierarchically, through a discourse hierarchy of definitions; and (b) all definitions share a common underlying structure, accessible through the application of a structural definition model. Crucially, analysis of definitions via these constructs allows a foundational definition of cyber war and cyber warfare to be identified. Concomitantly, use of the model identifies the areas of greatest interdefinitional inconsistency and the implications thereof and contributes to the construction of a taxonomy of definitions of cyber war and cyber warfare. Considered holistically, these research outputs allow for significant resolution of the inconsistency between definitions. Moreover, these outputs provide a basis for the emergence of dominant functional definitions that may aid in the development of policy, strategy, and doctrine.