Social Networks, Terrorism and Counter-terrorism

Radical and Connected

Martin Bouchard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317573258
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines two key themes in terrorism studies, the radicalization process and counter-terrorism policies, through the lens of social networks.

The book aims to show that networks should be at the forefront not only when analysing terrorists, but also when assessing the responses to their actions. The volume makes a unique contribution by addressing two relatively new themes for terrorism studies. First it puts social relations and cooperation issues at the forefront – an approach often identified as crucial to future breakthroughs in the field. Second, many contributions tackle the role of the Internet in the process of radicalization and in recruitment more generally, a highly debated topic in the field today. In addition, the book provides a valuable mix of review essays, critical essays, and original empirical studies. This balanced approach is also found in the topics covered by the authors, as well as their academic disciplines, which include sociology, computer science, geography, history, engineering, and criminology as well as political science. Many of the true advances in terrorism studies depend on the successful collaboration of multi-disciplinary teams, each with a different set of methodological and conceptual tools. This volume reflects the newfound diversity in this field and is a true product of its time.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, social networks, security studies, sociology, criminology and international relations in general.

1 Radical and connected An introduction

Martin Bouchard

DOI: 10.4324/9781315738291-1

Philippa Levey¹

It is easy for the outside observer to make the connection between radicalization and the Internet. After all, so many of the homegrown terrorists making headlines have been involved in online discussion forums, blogs and social media outlets, while having reported being “self-radicalized” and finding inspiration through watching videos on YouTube as well as reading violent literature found on extremist websites.

Yet, things are usually more complicated than that. First, the Internet is a tool for motivated individuals to search for information and exchange with other like-minded individuals sharing similar interests on any topic (Rainie and Wellman, 2012). It should therefore be no surprise that the Internet is similarly used by would-be terrorists, alongside the much larger crowd of curious observers who are online because of their general interest in exchanging on current world affairs or religion – individuals who should not be confused with “radicals.” The baseline hypothesis should then be that extremists use the Internet just as much as anyone else, and as researchers we should therefore investigate the instances where they use it more, less, differently or with more serious consequences than expected.

Second, the Internet is unlikely to be the sole medium of influence for the majority of terrorists. As mentioned by others before us, use of the Internet only gets you so far: far enough for the majority of individuals who may participate in online discussions or view content of an extremist nature but never truly “radicalize” themselves (McCauley and Moskalenko, 2008); not far enough for individuals who are joining terrorist groups engaged in planning and committing violent acts. The latter need offline interactions to further engage in the process, to learn specific techniques, and to start participating in conspiracies (Sageman, 2004, 2008; Awan, 2007; Jenkins, 2011; Nash and Bouchard, this volume).

The reality is that online interactions and material should be considered a key element in the radicalization process of many individuals. Because the Internet is omnipresent in the life of young people, but also because the size, intensity, ubiquity and sometimes quality of the motivational material found online is naturally framed to inspire its target audience, the question then becomes: can it be a sufficient condition for the violent radicalization of individuals? Can the radicalization process start, develop and mature solely online? These remain research questions that can be examined empirically, but despite a growing literature on this very topic (see Ducol, this volume), the role of the Internet has not been investigated systematically enough to give us clarity on the current situation.

Third, sometimes obscured from the discussions on the role of the Internet in the radicalization process is perhaps the most fundamental question, or the one with the most consequences: does the Internet “create” violent radicalization (and terrorism) where radicalization does not exist? In other words, are there more radicalized individuals because the Internet exists as a communication medium? This is a question also being asked in criminology more generally for many types of crimes, in the cyber context (are there more pedophiles because child pornography is readily available on the Internet?) but also offline (are more individuals becoming drug users in areas where drugs are more available?). This is an exposure argument whereby the availability of online material (violent or extremist in nature) and the possibility of interacting with similarly minded individuals in a virtual community provide an opportunity for radicalization to individuals who otherwise might not have considered this path (Neumann, 2013). These individuals would not have been proactively seeking information on their own. Instead, they would have stumbled upon these ideas for the first time during their routine online activities.

While the possibility of a personal radicalization process occurring solely on the Internet cannot be rejected, it may not be the most common pathway for current terrorist and those of the recent past. The Internet may act as a facilitator and conduit for radical views online, but rarely as an all-encompassing creator of radical offline behavior. The missing element, for many scholars, is the deep friendships of trust that develop as a result of face-to-face interactions evident in small groups (Sageman, 2004, 2008; Awan, 2007; Jenkins, 2011; McCauley and Moskalenko, 2008; Horgan, 2008). This research shows that personal grievances are common among radicals; however, the difference between all individuals with similar grievances and the ones who violently radicalize is often found in the differential socialization of the latter within radical groups (for a summary, see Bouchard and Nash, this volume).

Even if the importance of social ties in the radicalization process is increasingly acknowledged by terrorism scholars, the exact mechanisms under which this occurs have been given less attention. McCauley and Moskalenko (2008) discuss these various mechanisms, such as the slippery slope where individuals gradually become involved with a group, taking on small tasks and actions before complete adherence and membership ensues. More commonly, the mechanism that scholars have in mind, and that radicals are describing, refers to the implications on personal behavior of group cohesion and solidarity to friends. Face-to-face interactions and engagement in group activities provide those involved with a sense of emotional belonging to the group, creating pressure for conformity to group norms and behavior. These sorts of group-level factors are not unique to the context of extremism and terrorism. For instance, group processes help explain why street gang members commit more crime than other offenders but, more importantly, why many are ready to risk serious personal injuries and death for group-level grievances (e.g., Bouchard and Spindler, 2010). Cohesive groups have a tendency to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, cutting most out-group ties held prior to their radicalization (Sageman, 2004). They are, in essence, trading one network for another (Horgan, 2008). The case study of Omar Hammami analyzed in the chapter by Nash and Bouchard in this volume provides a clear demonstration of how a person’s pre-radicalization network gradually gives way to a more cohesive network of radicals.

Developments in the understanding of the importance of social networks and the Internet in terrorism are used in this book as a backdrop to propose a relatively wide-ranging set of contributions. The title of the book reflects our objective to cover a wide-ranging set of issues in the field while specifying the importance of social networks in our interpretation of the individual contributions to this book. The sub-title of the book, Radical and Connected, captures in two words many of the elements that introduce the nature of the contributions included in this volume. While the word “radical,” and its importance for the book, is not mysterious by now, it is the word “connected” which carries with it much of the common thread that can be found in the chapters of this volume. “Connected” in the sense that some of the attention of our authors is devoted to the Internet as a medium of influence for many individuals, whether they belong to the “radical few” or the much larger population of online sympathizers.

But more to the point, these individuals are connected in the sense of “social networks”: social networks of terrorists, on the one hand, but also social networks of the agencies organizing responses to terrorist acts and planning for the risks of such events. These agencies are connected as well. They are connected to the Internet, where their investigations inevitably lead them given the importance of computer-mediated communications for terrorist groups and violently radicalized individuals (Sageman, 2004; Neumann, 2013; Soriano, 2012). But they are also connected to other agencies in the context of multi-jurisdictional investigations and/or task forces specifically devoted to terrorist groups (Dupont, this volume; Kitchen and Molnar, this volume). Moreover, they are connected within their own ranks, where issues of internal relations and cooperation never cease to be both a challenge and a source of potential benefit when efficient networking leads to better organizational outcomes. It may not take a network to fight a network (Dupont, this volume), but it takes a team that can effectively cooperate, share information, trust one another, avoid internal conflicts, and work towards similar goals.

Research on cooperation in small groups has consistently shown how the manner in which individuals connect and cooperate have implications for group performance. This is true of terrorist groups whose structure influences the lethality of their attacks (Heger et al., 2012) and their ability to avoid detection (Helfstein and Wright, 2011), but also of security and law enforcement agencies (Brewer, 2013; Dupont, 2006; Whelan, 2014). For example, Whelan (2014) interviewed 20 upper-level security officials comprising Australia’s national security division for the purposes of examining the internal structural and organizational design of their network. Such a design is said to be most effective at managing and preventing security-related incidents when high levels of collaboration are present within the network structure (Whelan, 2014). In a similar fashion, Kitchen and Molnar (this volume) examine Canada’s counter-terrorism strategy with the goal of observing the effects of integration among social agents (people at all levels of government as well as civilians and foreign partners) and the sharing of national security technological devices. Park and Tsang (this volume) offer some intriguing insight into the recent computational frameworks being designed and tested as a means of identifying the most efficient and effective security responses when faced with possible terror attacks. In the spirit of integration, Kitchen and Molnar (this volume) address the benefits and possible complexities associated with high levels of integration in a manner consistent with Dupont (this volume), who further elaborates on the tension between collaboration and competition among national security organizations within Canada.

The point of departure of this book is the assumption that integrating network concepts and network methods to the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism is of central importance, from theoretical, empirical, and policy perspectives, in bringing the field forward. This is not exactly a new idea, although the move to study terrorist networks did not truly take off until the events of 9/11 (Krebs, 2002). Not all studies in this volume adopt a pure network approach or even use its methods. But all have a deep concern for examining the nature and impact of social interactions and cooperation in shaping the trajectories of terrorists and the nature of the responses to the threat of terrorism.

The organization of the book

Two characteristics make this collection of original papers stand out compared to others. First, it includes scholars from a wide range of disciplines, from the more traditional international studies, sociology and political science to criminology, history and computing science. What we gain in knowledge from the diversity of points of views and training of our authors, we may lose, to a certain extent, in specificity and depth. At the same time, we strongly believe in the need for a book that reflects such a wide variety of approaches under a single cover, as this allows for a broader understanding of the implications of the topic at hand, notably via the natural cross-disciplinary learning that is bound to occur.

Second, this book focuses on a wide spectrum of the possible research themes in the field, as opposed to a single one. The book title reflects this diversity of interest among authors, where new developments in research on radicalization and terrorism are found alongside work on counter-terrorism. The book is divided into two parts. Part I covers issues in radicalization, from the angle of history, network trajectories and the role of the Internet. Part II moves to issues in counter-terrorism, providing critiques of some of the current policies, but also describing some of the promising approaches currently being developed. A common thread among the majority of those contributions is a concern for examining social networks—either as an analogy, a concept, an explanatory variable or an object of inquiry. Each author accomplishes this in his or her own way, whether small or large, reflecting the relative place social interactions and cooperation have in the work they have chosen to feature in this book. It will be obvious to the reader that no framework was imposed on authors when inviting their respective contributions to this book. The freedom authors received was given in exchange for the meaningful contributions they could provide as experts in their own sub-fields of terrorism studies.

In Chapter 2 André Gerolymatos reminds us how revisiting the history of political Islam can help us better understand the different incarnations of the threats evident today and the security challenges we currently face in the twenty-first century. The social movement around “political Islam” that we see today has its roots in the Ottoman empire of the fifteenth century. This is a story merging the political struggles, religion and identity of Muslims around the world and the perception among some that they belong to one global network where the battles of some are the battles of all. This sort of interdependence is a key idea when understanding the local and global consequences of counter-terrorism policies. After this voyage into the roots of modern terrorism, Laura Huey brings us back to the present in Chapter 3 with her essay on how we approach the study of domestic radicalization. In reviewing recent cases of radicalized Canadians who do not fit the expected profile of terrorists (e.g., such as second-generation converts), Huey demonstrates how standard methodological tools overlook the unexpected cases; ignoring those outliers or “grey swans” puts us at risk of missing valuable and informative information on the process of radicalization. This essay is especially timely in light of the two separate events of October 2014 in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa, where two Canadian converts each killed a member of the Canadian military.

This book argues that attention to social networks is key to the development of the field, and the following contributions make this argument explicit. First, Bouchard and Nash devote a full chapter to reviewing the recent research in terrorism and counter-terrorism using network methods. Their chapter is meant to demonstrate the utility of network methods but also to highlight some of the areas in which additional work is required. The authors clarify the difference between network concepts and network methods and situate the development of network analysis in the wider context of research on radicalization, both onl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword—DANIEL HIEBERT AND LORNE L. DAWSON
• 1 Radical and connected: an introduction—MARTIN BOUCHARD AND PHILIPPA LEVEY
• PART I Terrorism and radicalization: history, networks and the Internet
• PART II Counter-terrorism: prospects, pitfalls, policies
• Index