Social Media

By Erin C. McGrath and Cody Buntain Reported terrorist attacks increased dramatically over the last decade or so, from just under 3,000 per year in 2001 to nearly 17,000 in 2014, amplifying the number of people subjected to the effects of terrorist attacks nearly six-fold over the last decade. At the same time, the introduction, popularity, ...

U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) has increasingly depended on commercial technology to gain an edge in battle. This has paid off as Islamic terrorists have moved some of the combat to the Internet, which they use for recruiting, fund raising, training and carrying out attacks or for defense. SOCOM is now turning to commercial Internet ...

By Lisa Kaati and Fredrik Johansson Lone wolf terrorists can come in a variety of shapes and backgrounds and they are in general very hard to detect before they attack. As argued by previous research, there are no clear profiles for lone wolf terrorists since they have a large variation in factors such as social status, ...

By Aabid Shafi ISIS’ social media capabilities are well known. The effectiveness with which the group makes use of social media to recruit new fighters and spread its propaganda has set off an alarm among security agencies around the globe. It has even led to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton terming ISIS the “most ...

VOX-Pol’s 2015 – 2016 Research Fellow is Dr. Matti Pohjonen. Matti joined VOX-Pol partner the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) at the University of Hamburg at the start of November 2015. Matti’s research focuses on different kinds of conflict mediation mechanisms through which social media communities across the world have tried to counter ...

by Andi Rahman Alamsyah People were commenting on social media within moments of the terrorist bombings and shooting on 14 January in Jakarta by attackers linked to Islamic State (IS). Two popular hashtags emerged on Twitter and Facebook: #PrayForJakarta and #KamiTidakTakut, which translates as “We are not afraid”. The Pray-for-something hashtag is a common phrase on ...

by Thomas Hegghammer I have studied jihadism online for nearly 15 years, and I have never seen jihadis exploit the Internet with greater ease, effectiveness and impunity than they do today. The past five years have seen a veritable collapse in the policing of extremist activity online, and I believe this has contributed significantly to ...

by Carl Miller   In June, the SAS and heavily armed police poured onto the streets of London. Fire brigade and paramedics appeared wearing flak jackets and explosions, sirens and automatic gunfire drowned out the sounds of the early morning commute. Men with balaclavas were seen running from building to building, and into Aldwych tube ...

by Athina Karatzogianni One of the key issues the West has had to face in countering Islamic State (IS) is the jihadi group’s mastery of online propaganda, seen in hundreds of thousands of messages celebrating the atrocities against civilians and spreading the message of radicalisation. It seems clear that efforts to counter IS online are missing ...

by Robyn Torok While the average person was getting on with life in Paris before last Friday’s terror bombings and shootings, Twitter threads in Arabic from the Middle East were urging for attacks to be launched upon coalition forces in their home countries. “Advance, advance – forward, forward” they said, regarding Paris. Iraqi forces had ...