When Jihadi Ideology Meets Social Media

This book is designed to provide specialists, spectators, and students with a brief and engaging exploration of media usage by radical groups and the laws regulating these grey areas of Jihadi propaganda activities. The authors investigate the use of religion to advance political agendas and the legal challenges involved with balancing regulation with free speech rights. The project also examines the reasons behind the limited success of leading initiatives to curb the surge of online extreme speech, such as Google’s “Redirect Method” or the U.S. State Department’s campaign called “Think Again.” The volume concludes by outlining a number of promising technical approaches that can potently empower tech companies to reduce religious extremist groups’ presence and impact on social media.

This interdisciplinary Handbook provides an in-depth analysis of the complex security phenomenon of disinformation and offers a toolkit to counter such tactics. Disinformation used to propagate false, inexact or out of context information is today a frequently used tool of political manipulation and information warfare, both online and offline. This Handbook evidences a historical thread of continuing practices and modus operandi in overt state propaganda and covert information operations. Further, it attempts to unveil current methods used by propaganda actors, the inherent vulnerabilities they exploit in the fabric of democratic societies and, last but not least, to highlight current practices in countering disinformation and building resilient audiences. The Handbook is divided into six thematic sections. The first part provides a set of theoretical approaches to hostile influencing, disinformation and covert information operations. The second part looks at disinformation and propaganda in historical perspective offering case study analysis of disinformation, and the third focuses on providing understanding of the contemporary challenges posed by disinformation and hostile influencing. The fourth part examines information and communication practices used for countering disinformation and building resilience. The fifth part analyses specific regional experiences in countering and deterring disinformation, as well as international policy responses from transnational institutions and security practitioners. Finally, the sixth part offers a practical toolkit for practitioners to counter disinformation and hostile influencing. This handbook will be of much interest to students of national security, propaganda studies, media and communications studies, intelligence studies and International Relations in general.

Social media has been weaponized, as state hackers and rogue terrorists have seized upon Twitter and Facebook to create chaos and destruction. This urgent report is required reading, from defense experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.

This book explores how ordinary Arab-speaking social media users have reacted to propaganda from the Islamic State, rather than how IS propaganda has targeted ordinary users, thus providing a change in perspective in the literature. The authors provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the Arabic discourse on IS, encompassing all phases of the Caliphate’s political evolution, from the apogee of the Islamic State in October 2014 to the loss of its unofficial capital of Raqqa in September 2017. Taking into account key events, the book also considers the most recurrent topics for IS and its opponents who engage in the Twitter conversation. The analysis is based on around 29 million tweets written in the Arabic language, representing a random sample of around one-third of all Arabic tweets referring to IS over the 2014-2017 timeframe.

The internet offers tremendous opportunities for violent extremists across the ideological spectrum and at a global level. In addition to propaganda, digital technologies have transformed the dynamics of radical mobilisation, recruitment and participation. Even though the jihadist threat has seemingly declined in the West, the danger exists of the internet being an environment where radical messages can survive and even prosper. Against this background, this ISPI report investigates the current landscape of jihadist online communication, including original empirical analysis. Specific attention is also placed on potential measures and initiatives to address the threat of online violent extremism. The volume aims to present important points for reflection on the phenomenon in the West (including Italy) and beyond.

From a technological standpoint, geography is largely irrelevant. Data flows through the internet without regard for political borders or territories. Services, communication, and interaction can occur online between persons who may be in different countries. Illegal activities, like hacking, cyberespionage, propagating terrorist propaganda, defamation, revenge porn, and illegal marketplaces may all be remotely targeted and accessed from various countries. As such, the internet has created an interesting and complex set of challenges for the concept of jurisdiction and conflicts of law. This title takes a comparative approach covering the EU, UK, US, Germany, and China. Broken into four parts, this book delves into the notion of jurisdiction as it relates to the internet. Part I focuses on the different meanings of the concept of jurisdiction, from a legal and historical perspective, and distinguishing between the different branches of government. It will highlight the challenges created by the internet, including social media and cloud computing. Part II analyses criminal jurisdiction, in regards to both jurisdictions in cybercrime cases and jurisdictional issues relating to criminal investigations (access to the cloud) and enforcement. Part III examines jurisdiction and applicable law in civil and commercial matters, such as e-commerce B2B and B2C contracts, torts typically occurring online, and online defamation and privacy infringement. Finally, Part IV looks at regulatory jurisdiction, examining the power of the executive (whether an arm of government or independent regulator) to apply and enforce national law. It will look at aspects like the provision of online audio-visual media services and online gambling services, both of which are heavily regulated, but which can be easily provided remotely from different jurisdictions. The book concludes by analysing how the concept of jurisdiction should be adapted to ensure the rule of law by nation states and prevent international conflicts between states. This title gives a comprehensive look at the complicated subject of internet jurisdiction, essential for all dealing with jurisdictions in the modern age.

A penetrating look into the inner logic of al-Qa'ida and like-minded extremist groups by which they justify September 11 and other terrorist attacks includes specific ideologies of jihadism, a new movement that allows members to call for the destruction of democracy and to murder innocent men, women, and children.

Explores the use of images, sounds and videos in Jihadi media and how people engage with them ISIS is often described as a terrorist organisation that uses social media to empower its supporters and reinforce its message. Through 12 case studies, this book examines the different ways in which Jihadi groups and their supporters use visualisation, sound production and aesthetic means to articulate their cause in online as well as offline contexts. Divided into 4 thematic sections, the chapters probe Jihadi appropriation of traditional and popular cultural expressions and show how, in turn, political activists appropriate extremist media to oppose and resist the propaganda. By conceptualising militant Islamist audiovisual productions as part of global media aesthetics and practices, the authors shed light on how religious actors, artists, civil society activists, global youth, political forces, security agencies and researchers engage with mediated manifestations of Jihadi ideology to deconstruct, reinforce, defy or oppose the messages. Key Features - Fosters theoretical approaches to audiovisuality in the context of 'propagandistic' imagery - Points to strategies and logics of appropriation within and around Jihadi audiovisuality, such as humour, re-enactments and memetic forms of cultural resistance - Considers cultural and aesthetic expressions that evolve in response to Jihadi media output - Presents empirically grounded research, combined with historical, multi-modal, rhetorical, ethnomusicological and digital audiovisual analysis and interpretations - Case studies include: an exploration of staged violence in IS productions; the appropriation of IS's nashīd Ṣalīl al-Ṣawārim in digital contexts; the responses by social workers and former supporters of jihadi groups and movements; and how researchers themselves are part of the entanglements caused by politicisation and securitisation of Islam Christoph Günther is the Principal Investigator and Simone Pfeifer is a Postdoctoral Researcher of the junior research group 'Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, their Dissemination and Appropriation' at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Cover image: Scarecrow, Khalid Albaih 2019 Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-6751-3 Barcode

Over the last three years Europe and North America have been hit by an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks perpetrated by individuals motivated by jihadist ideology. Who are the individuals who have carried out these attacks? Were they born and raised in the West? Or were they an “imported threat”, refugees and migrants? How did they radicalize? Were they well educated and integrated, or social outcasts? Did they act alone? What were their connections to the Islamic State? The answers to these and other questions have large implications for our understanding of the threat facing us and, consequently, help us design sounder policy solutions built on empirical evidence. This study, the first of its kind, seeks to analyze the demographic profile, radicalization trajectories and connections to the Islamic State of all the individuals who have carried out attacks inspired by jihadist ideology in North America and Europe in the three years since the proclamation of the caliphate in June 2014.