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Global Terrorism and New Media carefully examines the content of terrorist websites and extremist television programming to provide a comprehensive look at how terrorist groups use new media today.

Based partly on a content analysis of discussion boards and forums, the authors share their findings on how terrorism 1.0 is migrating to 2.0 where the interactive nature of new media is used to build virtual organization and community. Although the creative use of social networking tools such as Facebook may advance the reach of terrorist groups, the impact of their use of new media remains uncertain. The book pays particular attention to terrorist media efforts directed at women and children, which are evidence of the long-term strategy that some terrorist organizations have adopted, and the relationship between terrorists’ media presence and actual terrorist activity. This volume also looks at the future of terrorism online and analyzes lessons learned from counterterrorism strategies.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, media and communication studies, security studies and political science.

This brief study surveys a representative sample of Arabic- language jihadist* media from July 2007 and attempts to answer two simple, yet crucial, questions: What does the structure of jihadist media tell us about the relationship between Al-Qaeda central and the movements that affiliate themselves with it? And what can the priorities of jihadist media tell us about the operational priorities of Al-Qaeda and affiliated movements?

ƒWhile not as large as in many other Western
countries, ISIS-related mobilization in the United States
has been unprecedented.

As of the fall of 2015, U.S.
authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have
traveled or attempted to travel to Syria/Iraq to join the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and 900 active investigations
against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states.

ƒ Seventy-one individuals have been charged with
ISIS-related activities since March 2014. Fifty-six have
been arrested in 2015 alone, a record number of
terrorism-related arrests for any year since 9/11. Of
those charged:
‚ The average age is 26.
‚ 86% are male.
‚ Their activities were located in 21 states.
‚ 51% traveled or attempted to travel abroad.
‚ 27% were involved in plots to carry out attacks on
U.S. soil.
‚ 55% were arrested in an operation involving an
informant and/or an undercover agent.

ƒ A small number of Americans have been killed in
ISIS-related activities: three inside the U.S., at least a
dozen abroad.

ƒ The profiles of individuals involved in ISIS-related activities
in the U.S. differ widely in race, age, social class,
education, and family background. Their motivations
are equally diverse and defy easy analysis.
ƒ Social media plays a crucial role in the radicalization
and, at times, mobilization of U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers.
The Program on Extremism has identified some
300 American and/or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers active
on social media, spreading propaganda, and interacting
with like-minded individuals. Some members
of this online echo chamber eventually make the leap
from keyboard warriors to actual militancy.

ƒ American ISIS sympathizers are particularly active on
Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that
often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse
game. Some accounts (the “nodes”) are the generators
of primary content, some (the “amplifiers”) just retweet
material, others (the “shout-outs”) promote newly created
accounts of suspended users.

ƒ ISIS-related radicalization is by no means limited to
social media. While instances of purely web-driven,
individual radicalization are numerous, in several cases
U.S.-based individuals initially cultivated and later
strengthened their interest in ISIS’s narrative through
face-to-face relationships. In most cases online and
offline dynamics complement one another.

ƒ The spectrum of U.S.-based sympathizers’ actual involvement
with ISIS varies significantly, ranging from
those who are merely inspired by its message to those
few who reached mid-level leadership positions within
the group.

Islamic State stunned the world when it overran an area the size of Britain on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border in a matter of weeks and proclaimed the birth of a new Caliphate. In this timely and important book, Abdel Bari Atwan draws on his unrivalled knowledge of the global jihadi movement and Middle Eastern geopolitics to reveal the origins and modus operandi of Islamic State. Based on extensive field research and exclusive interviews with IS insiders, Atwan outlines the group’s leadership structure, as well as its strategies, tactics and diverse methods of recruitment. He traces the Salafi-jihadi lineage of IS, its ideological differences with al-Qa’ida and the deadly rivalry that has emerged between their leaders. Atwan also shows how the group’s rapid growth has been facilitated by its masterful command of social media platforms, the ‘dark web’, Hollywood ‘blockbuster’-style videos, and even jihadi computer games, producing a powerful paradox where the ambitions of the Middle Ages have re-emerged in cyber-space.As Islamic State continues to dominate the world’s media headlines with horrific acts of ruthless violence, Atwan considers the movement’s chances of survival and expansion, and offers indispensable insights on potential government responses to contain the IS threat.

The present report is the second in a series of reports to be issued pursuant to
Security Council resolution 2178 (2014), which requires the Counter-Terrorism
Committee Executive Directorate to assess Member States’ capacity to stem the flow
of foreign terrorist fighters, identify good practices in that regard and facilitate the
delivery of related technical assistance to States in need. The first report adopted a
thematic approach to the foreign terrorist fighter threat, focusing on the
implementation efforts of 21 Member States. The second report adopts a regional
approach and analyses the efforts of 32 States in Central Asia, the Maghreb, East
Africa/Horn of Africa, Western Europe and Oceania/Americas.

Lately, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has managed to control large parts of Syria and Iraq. To better understand the roots of support for ISIS, we present a study using Twitter data. We collected a large number of Arabic tweets referring to ISIS and classified them as pro-ISIS or anti-ISIS. We then analyzed the historical timelines of both user groups and looked at their pre-ISIS period to gain insights into the antecedents of support. Also, we built a classifier to ‘predict’, in retrospect, who will support or oppose the group. We show that ISIS supporters largely differ from ISIS opposition in that the former referred a lot more to Arab Spring uprisings that failed than the latter.