Islamist Militants on the Internet

ABSTRACT

The problem of online radicalisation is at the nexus of two key trends: the democratisation of communications driven by user generated content on the Internet; and the democratisation of strategic violence driven by mass-casualty non-state terrorism. How can governments capitalise on the first trend to counter the second?

This article makes the case that challenging Islamist militant radicalisation and recruitment at the point of dissemination on the Internet should be a very high counterterrorism priority. However, the “user driven revolution” in Internet communications in the past three years has empowered militants, and reduced government’s ability to directly control communications on the Internet. Accordingly, this article advocates a user driven strategy to tackle radicalisation in the chat rooms and web forums where government is increasingly unable to reach.


AUTHORS

Institute of International and European Affairs, Dublin
Ireland

Johnny Ryan is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of International and European Affairs. He recently published a book on this subject Countering Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the Internet: a user driven strategy to recover the web, Institute of International and European Affairs, Dublin.

Journal of Information Warfare

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Keywords

A

AI
APT

C

C2
C2S
CDX
CIA
CIP
CPS

D

DNS
DoD
DoS

I

IA
ICS

M

P

PDA

S

SOA

X

XRY

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