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John Mueller examines the degree to which the cybercoaching of terrorists should be cause for concern, arguing that in
many cases cybercoaches have little control over their amateurish charges.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Terrorist organizations increasingly resort to the Internet to promote terrorism, recruit new terrorists, plan and finance their operations. The paper first proposes a definition of terrorism, cyberterrorism, and online terrorism preparatory acts. It then analyses whether current binding international instruments on terrorism, organized crime or cybercrime could prohibit cyber activities precursor of terrorism. The paper concludes that there is no gap in international law that leaves online terrorism related acts completely unregulated. It nevertheless recommends the drafting of an international treaty that would respond more comprehensively, precisely and thus efficiently to the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes.

This study addresses the crime of promoting terrorist acts through digital platforms, its dangers, and the legislative gaps in this context within the Jordanian Cybercrime Law No. 17 of 2023, comparing it with the corresponding legislative provisions in UAE. The problem at the core of this study lies in the insufficiency of the Jordanian Cybercrime Law to effectively address the crime of promoting terrorist acts through digital platforms, social media, new media, and smart applications, with a clear oversight despite its importance and necessity. The study concludes with several results and recommendations, which will be summarised here. Firstly, technical infrastructure issues: The technical infrastructure continues to face significant issues that allow terrorists to infiltrate, along with insufficient international cooperation between Jordan and other countries to address advanced electronic threats and ensure effective digital security. The study concludes with several recommendations, the most prominent being the need to add a specific provision to the Jordanian Cybercrime Law No. 17 of 2023 to penalise this crime.

Given the proliferation of violent extremist content online in recent years, developing effective counter-narratives – messages that offer a positive alternative to extremist propaganda, or deconstruct or delegitimise extremist narratives and challenge extremist ideologies – is an increasingly necessary alternative to online censorship. This Handbook, funded by Public Safety Canada through the Kanishka Project, was created by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) to help anyone looking to proactively respond to extremist propaganda with counter-narrative campaigns, and is intended as a beginner’s guide for those with little or no previous experience of counter-narrative campaigning. It takes readers through the main stages of creating, launching and evaluating an effective c ounter-narrative c ampaign. I t c an a lso b e u sed a longside I SD’s freely available online Counter-narrative Toolkit, which can be found at www.counternarratives.org. Our advice is based on ISD’s experiences in creating, running and evaluating in-house campaigns such as Extreme Dialogue, and collaborating with independent content-creators, from civil society and NGO campaigners to young activists, to amplify their counter-narrative messages through training, networking and campaign support. This Handbook therefore focuses on civil-society, youth or NGO-led online counternarrative campaigns.