Keeping Up With Foreign Fighters & Sympathizers: An Exploratory Analysis of Social Media Content

• In Event: The Role of Propaganda Videos, Web Forums, and Media in Terrorism and Violent Extremism

Abstract

This paper explores social media usage and internet exploitation in violent extremism. The advent of the internet saw the evolution of the post 9/11 violent extremism threat landscape with social media being exploited. In recent years, different methods involving analysis of open-source data were explored. However, few studies have made comparisons across groups within the violent extremism sphere. This paper thus compares the social media content extracted from accounts belonging to both ISIS-affiliated foreign fighters (n1 =14) and sympathizers of violent extremism (n2 =18) from 2009 – 2015. We employ a mixed-method approach focusing largely on a qualitative content analysis, culminating in dominant themes with interesting group differences. We found the following seven themes: Intolerance, threats to in-group, politics, social and religion incompatibility, pursuit for significance, calls for action/mobilization, religion and commitment issues.

Authors

• Leevia Dillon, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / The Graduate Center, CUNY

• Loo Seng Neo, Home Team Behavioural Sciences Center, Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore

• Joshua Freilich, John Jay College of Criminal Justice