Details
Authors: Chamin Herath and Joe Whittaker
Date of Publication: November 22nd, 2021
Journal/Publisher: Terrorism and Political Violence
Purpose of Study
Key Questions Addressed
The article seeks to assess individuals' different online and offline antecedent behaviours.
Design of Study
Approach
This study utilised an existing open-source database of 231 IS terrorist actors from the U.S., who were active between the years 2012 to 2020. Court documents were searched for via the Program on Extremism repository, which holds over 20,000 pages of criminal complaints, indictments, affidavits, and courtroom transcripts. This was supplemented by searching for court documents via legal search engines such as CourtListener.
After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria and accounting for duplicated cases, the final sample is 231 terrorist actors.
After data collection was completed, the data were coded using a codebook derived from the academic literature that has been used in previous studies which analysed the role of the Internet in terrorist pathways. To analyse the interactions between the online and offline domains in terrorist pathways, the authors conducted a two-step cluster analysis using the network and event-specific behavioural data.
Key Findings
The most significant contribution that this study has made is via the discovery and development of four ideal-types of terrorist behavioural pathways. In essence, these typologies contrast with the very notion of “online radicalisation” as implicit in this notion is the idea that the online and offline domains are two separate and autonomous realities; “the virtual world” and “the real world.” The typologies are:
- The integrated pathway
- The encouraged pathway
- The isolated pathway
- The enclosed pathway
As these typologies collectively illustrate, the reality is significantly more complex. Pathways towards terrorism are not confined to either online or offline but exist on a spectrum in which online and offline are the two most extreme points.
Key Recommendations
These findings have important implications for both academics and policymakers. The most important proposition is challenging the analytic utility of “online radicalisation” in contemporary pathways towards terrorism. As an ill-defined and conceptually problematic term, the widespread use of “online radicalisation” has promoted a sharp division between the online and offline realms and therefore propagated a debate which has focused too heavily on one domain or the other.
Furthermore, rather than using nebulous terminology and focusing on the location where “radicalisation” takes place, this study proposes that cases be considered in a more holistic manner, attempting to understand risk factors and vulnerabilities. It may be more fruitful to consider the environment in which a would-be terrorist finds themself and how it affects their norm-based motivations.