Online Terrorist Propaganda, Recruitment, and Radicalization

John R. Vacca

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138048263
• eBook ISBN: 9781351691352
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Online Terrorist Propaganda, Recruitment, and Radicalization is most complete treatment of the rapidly growing phenomenon of how terrorists' online presence is utilized for terrorism funding, communication, and recruitment purposes. The book offers an in-depth coverage of the history and development of online "footprints" to target new converts, broaden their messaging, and increase their influence. Chapters present the emergence of various groups; the advancement of terrorist groups' online presences; their utilization of video, chat room, and social media; and the current capability for propaganda, training, and recruitment.

With contributions from leading experts in the field—including practitioners and terrorism researchers—the coverage moves from general factors to specific groups practices as relate to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and numerous other groups. Chapters also examine the lone wolf phenomenon as a part of the disturbing trend of self-radicalization. A functional, real-world approach is used regarding the classification of the means and methods by which an online presence is often utilized to promote and support acts of terrorism.

Online Terrorist Propaganda, Recruitment, and Radicalization examines practical solutions in identifying the threat posed by terrorist propaganda and U.S. government efforts to counter it, with a particular focus on ISIS, the Dark Web, national and international measures to identify, thwart, and prosecute terrorist activities online. As such, it will be an invaluable resources for intelligence professionals, terrorism and counterterrorism professionals, those researching terrorism funding, and policy makers looking to restrict the spread of terrorism propaganda online.

Section V

Online Terrorist Propaganda

Chapter 14

Metaphors of Radicalization

A Computational and Qualitative Analysis of Jihadi Propaganda

Ben Miller , Weeda Mehran , Yassin Kosay Alsahlani , and Haroon Qahtan

CONTENTS

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Background on Online Radicalization

14.3 Linguistic and Psychological Models of Radicalization

14.3.1 What Is the IMB Model and How Does It Relate to Radicalization?

14.3.2 How Does Conceptual Metaphor Function in Relation to Radicalization?

14.3.3 Technical Literature on NLP

14.3.4 Metaphor Identification and Classification

14.4 Where and How the Islamic State Writes

14.4.1 Operationalization of IMB

14.5 Patterns of Metaphor in Jihadi Propaganda

14.6 Summary

Notes

References

14.1 Introduction

Radicalization of individuals to violent action or the support of violent action presents an almost impossibly complex problem for study. It can take place across any medium or set of media, on the scale of a purposeful global propaganda campaign in multiple languages or by accident via unrecorded one-on-one conversations. It can take place over the course of long periods of time, or in an afternoon. The consequences of radicalized individuals and institutions, however, are concrete and drastic. Radicalized individuals have committed attacks on public transit systems, in public and private buildings, and against peaceful gatherings of civilians worldwide. In the period from January 2011 to June 2015, a study found that there were 69 terrorism plots in Europe, North America, and Australia. Overall, 19 of those plots came to fruition. The study goes on to argue that 30 had a declared connection to the Islamic State, and that plots with an IS connection were twice as likely than plots not connected to IS to move from planning to practice [1]. Ingram [2] interprets this information to suggest that it is in part the persuasive efficacy of the IS media campaign that led to this increased likelihood of execution, while Hegghammer and Nesser suggest that undercover operatives themselves may have precipitated the higher likelihood of a plot moving beyond the planning stage [1]. The conventional wisdom put forward by Ingram, that propaganda contributes to radicalization, is pervasive throughout the literature on atrocities [3 –5]. Understanding how messages that incite radicalization are composed, structured, and function to radicalize individuals such that they are more willing to further political agendas through violent, unidirectional means may help efforts to reduce the effectiveness of this kind of messaging.

In this study, we examine the writing produced by various Islamic State affiliates in English so as to disentangle the relationship between the writing and radicalization. Our examination of written propaganda focuses on their use of metaphors. We do so because as Steuter and Willis argue in their study, At War with Metaphor, “the metaphors we use reflect and reflexively shape our thinking.” They go further, indicating the kinds of metaphors typically used to radicalize; “[t]he massacres and genocides that comprise our most painful historical moments are characterized by a persistent dehumanization of the enemy,” and “[l]anguage itself, in the way it invites us to understand both the enemy and ourselves, becomes a potential weapon” [6]. Most significantly, they state, “[i]t is language, rather than logic, that summons us through its emotional affect to a war we can no longer justify.”

In tracing the role of metaphor in the propaganda efforts of the Islamic State and its affiliates, our research bridges two bodies of theory. The first, conceptual metaphor theory [7], describes how language functions to communicate ideas by connecting a concept in one abstract domain via references to ideas in another more concrete domain. As an example, one might refer to an idea as “brilliant,” a connection transferring a feeling from the concrete domain of light and brightness to the abstract domain of inspiration. To supplement the perspective provided by Lakoff and Johnson’s work, we relied on the operationalization of their work by Gordon et. al. [8], which presents 14 abstract ontological categories covering the range of conceptual and linguistic metaphors and their correspondence to the annotation work of [9]. The second body of theory on which this study draws is the information–motivation–behavioral skills (IMB) model [10], which describes how to understand the causal pathways linking messaging and behavior. Developed in the public health domain, it first appeared in studies of people’s adoption of proactive behavior in relation to the public health crises of smoking and HIV. Fisher and Fisher separated messaging into components of information, such as that condoms prevent the transmission of HIV, the reasons and motivation for why the information is significant, such as that HIV can be a fatal disease, and the behavioral skills needed to implement the information, such as how to properly use a condom.

To develop the connections between these two bodies of theory, we simultaneously apply a computational and qualitative research design that allows for us to assess the relationship between the use of conceptual metaphors and the information, motivation, and skills communicated by the documents in our research corpus. Our method involved manual, parallel, qualitative coding of a subset of documents from our jihadi corpus for both metaphor usage and focus on information, motivation, or behavioral skills. Comparing those two sets of manual annotations using a bag-of-words model [11, 12] showed connections between different types of metaphor and different elements in the IMB model. For example, to convey information, wr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Editor
• Contributors
• Section I Introduction
• Section II A Transnational Recruitment Problem of Violent Online Extremist Terrorists
• Section III Policy and Legislative Frameworks Responses to Threats Presented by Online Terrorists
• Section IV Policy and Legislative Frameworks Responses to Threats Presented by Online Terrorists
• Section V Online Terrorist Propaganda
• Section VI ISIS and the Dark Web
• Section VII International Cooperation with Online Terrorism
• Section VIII Private Sector Cooperation and Responsibility for Countering the Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes
• Section IX Appendices
• Index