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Violent Jihadist movements have increasingly produced online English language magazines in order to encourage young Muslims into terrorism. This article argues that sociological approaches to the study of these magazines should engage with theories of political myth, understood as the collective “work” on dramatic and figurative narratives which provide significance to the political conditions of social groups. The utility of this approach is demonstrated through an analysis of al-Qaeda’s online magazine, Inspire. Targeted toward an alienated young Western Muslim readership, Inspire stylistically mimics Western magazines by using satirical representations of politicians and making references to popular culture. The authors seek to convince their readership that they are part of a violent conflict with Western “crusaders” and treacherous false Muslims. Through a rhetorical strategy of “legitimization via proximization,” perceived injustices committed by the purported enemies of Islam throughout the world are seen as direct attacks on the reader and all Muslims. The reader must sacrifice his/her livelihood in order to become a “hero” and defend the Umma against its enemies. The article concludes that the mobilizing potential of the work on myth in these magazines necessitates further research.

Al Qaeda is today a fragmented organization, and its strategic communication efforts now focus largely on recruiting individuals in the West to carry out “individual jihad” in their home countries. One Al Qaeda–affiliated publication, Inspire, represents an unusual use of the digital magazine format and content for recruitment. This study examines the content and design of Inspire to determine how the magazine may advance the self-radicalization that it seeks to induce in its readers. This analysis finds that the magazine weaves together jihadist ideology, a narrow interpretation of Islam, and appropriations of Western popular culture to maximize the publication’s potential for motivating readers toward violence.

The jihadist groups AQAP, ISIS, and the Taliban have all produced glossy English magazines designed to influence Western sympathizers. We examine these magazines empirically with respect to models of the intensity of informative, imaginative, deceptive, jihadist, and gamification language. This allows their success to be estimated and their similarities and differences to be exposed. We also develop and validate an empirical model of propaganda; according to this model Dabiq, ISIS’s magazine ranks highest of the three.

Terrorist groups have proved in recent years that they are particularly adept at
utilizing the Internet and social media to facilitate their activities, including incitement
to commit a terrorist act, radicalization to violence, recruitment, training, planning,
collection of information, communication, preparation, financing and execution of
attacks. In addition to Al-Qaida, one terrorist entity that has benefited significantly from
ICT is the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as Daesh. ISIL and its
supporters exploit the Internet as a means to broadcast its ideology and has made effective
use of the vast reach and rapidly evolving communications environment provided by
social media applications, which also serve as a highly effective tool for ISIL recruiters,
who have succeeded in attracting a global pool of around 25,000 foreign fighters from
over 100 States.

The article describes the research network “Analysis of extremist aspirations in social networks (X-SONAR)” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The network investigates extremist interaction and escalation dynamics in social online networks and their relevance for criminally relevant radicalization processes, such as in the planning and execution of extremist acts of violence. Among other things, the aim is to derive a model for risk assessment and prevention and to develop a demonstrator for a software-based tool that can be used by end-users from security agencies and civil society for on-demand monitoring of extremist agitation in virtual contexts.

The threat posed by terrorism today is changing rapidly—as have methods of study of this phenomenon, including analysis of radicalisation and the ‘terrorist cycle’. This chapter takes a qualitative approach to one aspect of contemporary terrorism, self-directed (‘lone wolf’) terrorism by right-wing extremists. Predominately plaguing the USA at first, solo actor terrorism by fascist extremists crossed the Atlantic in 1999 with David Copeland’s attacks in London, and most horrifically with Anders Behring Breivik’s murder of 77 people in Oslo and Utøya in 2011. Like these two terrorist murderers, the two case studies discussed here, Neil Lewington and Ian Davison, were also radicalised online through ‘passive’ and ‘active’ networks of support. Although interdicted before committing acts of terrorism, the different pathways of online radicalisation by Lexington and Davison are the central subject here.