Psychological Effects of the Threat of ISIS

2016 ◽  
pp. 168-173
Author(s):  
Weiying Hu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
The Self ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
End Times ◽  
Foreign Fighters ◽  
Present World

The threat of violent extremism has been considerably influenced by the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), its inhumane brutal killings in Iraq and Syria, and exploitation of social media to recruit large numbers of foreign fighters in a scale never seen before. This development has serious implications for Singapore's security landscape. This aggressive promotion of fighting in Syria has resonated with a handful of Singaporeans, who were radicalised by radical online propaganda. In this psychological study of the Singapore cases, there are five psychological drivers that have contributed to the radicalisation process of these cases. They are: (1) justifying violence, (2) romanticising the notion of a utopian state, (3) desire to be a ‘good' Muslim, (4) escaping the ‘unbearable present' world, and (5) existential anxiety in relation to End Times prophecies. The preliminary findings further indicate that most of these radicalised individuals have engaged in negative activism.

Understanding the Islamic State—A Review Essay

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 127-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Byman
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Terrorist Threat ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Raison D’État ◽  
Foreign Fighters

This article reviews several recent books on the Islamic State in order to understand its goals, motivations, strategy, and vulnerabilities. It argues that the Islamic State's ideology is powerful but also highly instrumental, offering the group legitimacy and recruiting appeal. Raison d'etat often dominates its decisionmaking. The Islamic State's strength is largely a consequence of the policies and weaknesses of its state adversaries. In addition, the group has many weaknesses of its own, notably its brutality, reliance on foreign fighters, and investment in a state as well as its tendency to seek out new enemies. The threat the Islamic State poses is most severe at the local and regional levels. The danger of terrorism to the West is real but mitigated by the Islamic State's continued prioritization of the Muslim world and the heightened focus of Western security forces on the terrorist threat. A high-quality military force could easily defeat Islamic State fighters, but there is no desire to deploy large numbers of Western ground troops, and local forces have repeatedly shown many weaknesses. In the end, containing the Islamic State and making modest rollback efforts may be the best local outcomes.

Transnational Terrorism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex S. Wilner
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cold War ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
European Security ◽  
Transnational Terrorism ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
Islamist Terrorism ◽  
Foreign Fighters

Transnational terrorism, an enduring phenomenon that became a hallmark of the post-cold-war era, continues to evolve. This chapter explores several emerging trends in Islamist terrorism that are likely to challenge European security institutions in the coming years and decades. The chapter argues that the Islamic State has revolutionized the jihadist landscape. ISIS has effectively eclipsed al-Qaeda, modernizing its predecessor’s hidebound model of allegiance and recruitment, sponsoring and facilitating attacks overseas, lighting sectarian fires across the Middle East and North Africa, and exploiting cyber tools and social media to propagandize itself widely. Relatedly, European foreign fighters have joined ISIS at an unprecedented clip: several thousand have fought within its ranks. Combining these trends helps illustrate how transnational terrorism challenges European security in new and complex ways.

scholarly journals Regulating terrorist content on social media: automation and the rule of law

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Macdonald ◽  
Sara Giro Correia ◽  
Amy-Louise Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Displacement Effects

AbstractSocial-media companies make extensive use of artificial intelligence in their efforts to remove and block terrorist content from their platforms. This paper begins by arguing that, since such efforts amount to an attempt to channel human conduct, they should be regarded as a form of regulation that is subject to rule-of-law principles. The paper then discusses three sets of rule-of-law issues. The first set concerns enforceability. Here, the paper highlights the displacement effects that have resulted from the automated removal and blocking of terrorist content and argues that regard must be had to the whole social-media ecology, as well as to jihadist groups other than the so-called Islamic State and other forms of violent extremism. Since rulebylaw is only a necessary, and not a sufficient, condition for compliance with rule-of-law values, the paper then goes on to examine two further sets of issues: the clarity with which social-media companies define terrorist content and the adequacy of the processes by which a user may appeal against an account suspension or the blocking or removal of content. The paper concludes by identifying a range of research questions that emerge from the discussion and that together form a promising and timely research agenda to which legal scholarship has much to contribute.

An Analysis of ISIS Propaganda and Recruitment Activities Targeting the Turkish-Speaking Population

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suleyman Ozeren ◽  
Hakan Hekim ◽  
M. Salih Elmas ◽  
Halil Ibrahim Canbegi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The World ◽  
Recruitment Activities ◽  
Foreign Fighters

AbstractThe “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) is the main source of instability, not only in Iraq and Syria, but also throughout the Middle East. The instability poses a danger for the other parts of the world because of the influx of foreign fighters to the region. Extremists have taken advantage of the continuing conflicts in Iraq and Syria, with Syria in particular serving as a magnet for thousands of foreign fighters from more than 90 countries. While most of these ISIS combatants are men, many women have left their countries behind to join the “caliphate” and support its cause. Social media have played a key role in luring women to join ISIS. This study therefore analyzed the ISIS organization’s social media propaganda and grass-roots recruitment activities aimed at women in Turkey. The results of the analysis provide important information about the strategies that ISIS uses to spread its ideology.

scholarly journals Violent Extremism in the Western Balkans: Re-Shaping the Islamist Terrorist Phenomenon in South-Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35
Author(s):  
Edoardo Corradi
Keyword(s):  
Minority Group ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Main Driver ◽  
Western Balkan Region ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The One ◽  
Foreign Fighters

AbstractThis paper aims to shed new light on the phenomenon of Islamist violent extremism across the Western Balkans. This phenomenon has recently drawn worldwide attention due to the risk that the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) has raised as an international actor. The main theoretical argument is that the main driver of foreign fighters aligns with the Roy theory about the “Islamization of radicalism”. So far, academic literature on Islamist terrorism has often considered the Western Balkan region as the one with the highest percentage of foreign fighters. Notwithstanding this being correct, such analysis seems superficial, since it misrepresents the image of the region itself. In this paper, the countries taken into account are those with a high percentage of Muslim population (e.g. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo) and with a large Muslim autochthonous minority group (e.g. the Republic of North Macedonia). The comparison of the estimates of foreign fighters in Syria from the Western Balkans with data from several sources led us to understand the existence of a precise narrative towards the region and the Islamist religion.

The Impact of Evolving Jihadist Narratives on Radicalisation in the West

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akil N. Awan
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Foreign Fighters ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the role Jihadist narratives have played in the radicalization of young Muslims in the West towards violent extremism, and how these narratives have changed over the years as Islamic State (ISIS) has trumped Al-Qaeda in becoming the organization of choice for most Western Jihadists today. The chapter explores the biographies of numerous individuals drawn to violent extremism, including those who have travelled abroad as foreign fighters or conducted home grown domestic terrorist attacks. The study finds that radical narratives only have potency when they intersect with structural conditions or the lived experiences that individuals may find themselves in. The chapter explores the role of religion, identity, altruism, and socio-economic marginalization in helping to account for increasing recruitment to Jihadism, suggesting fruitful avenues for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) measures.

scholarly journals The Personality of Extremists: Examining Violent and Non-Violent Defense of Muslims

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milan Obaidi ◽  
Robin Bergh ◽  
Nazar Akrami ◽  
John F. Dovidio
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Foreign Fighters

Many early explanations for violent extremism focused on clinical dispositions, withpoor empirical support. In the current work, we argued that violent extremists might be “normal” in a clinical sense while nonetheless bearing certain personality signatures. Results from five studies among four general population of Muslims and a sample of former Mujahideen suggest that both violent and non-violent behavioral intentions among European Muslims and Muslims in the Middle East are predicted by basic personality traits. Results from individual studies and a meta-analysis showed that more violent intentions were related to lower altruism, lower openness to experience, and lower emotionality, whereas more non-violent intentions were primarily related to higher altruism. When substituting non-violent intentions with actual behaviors the results were similar, suggesting that the findings are not merely self-report artefacts. Finally, the violent intention effects were consistent across the three European countries (e.g., Belgium, Denmark and Sweden) that provided the most foreign fighters to Islamic State per capita. Overall, the personality model explained 11% of the individual differences in non-violent and 27% of the violent intentions.

FACEBOOK SEBAGAI MEDIA BARU TAFSIR AL-QUR’AN DI INDONESIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Wildan Imaduddin Muhammad
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Methodological Problem ◽  
The Self ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
Basic Character ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
The Times ◽  
Qur'anic Interpretation

This article analyzes the product of Salman Harun's Qur'anic  interpretation with  Facebook  as the medium. As one of the senior professors who pursue the field of interpretation, he has managed to follow the times by utilizing internet technology. There are two focus areas in the study; the first aspect of the sense of Indonesian tafsir attached to the self of Salman Harun, the two aspects of the novelty of discourse that became the basic character of social media. Both aspects are interesting to be studied with a hermeneutic approach. Given that  the  methodological problem that often arises from the hermeneutic approach is the context of the interpreter that is difficult to trace accurately, then this article finds its relevance to the case of Salman Harun's interpretation which uses the facebook media as the actualization of its interpretation product.

Role of Social Media in Spreading Violent Extremism in Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakin Tanvir ◽  
Mehbeez Matiur ◽  
Fahim Hossain
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Violent Extremism

FASHION BLOGGERS AS CELEBRITY EXPERTS IN RUSSIAN-SPOKEN SEGMENT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-156
Author(s):  
Zemfira K. Salamova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
The World

Social media has contributed to the spread of fashion, style or lifestyle blogging around the world. This study focuses on self-presentation strategies of Russian-speaking fashion bloggers. Its objects are Instagram accounts and YouTube channels of two Russian fashion bloggers: Alexander Rogov and Karina Nigay. The study also observes their appearances as guests in various interview shows on YouTube. Alexander Rogov received his initial fame through his television projects. Karina Nigay achieved popularity online on YouTube and Instagram, therefore she is a “pure” example of Internet celebritiy, whose rise to fame took place on the Internet. The article includes the following objectives 1) to study the self-branding of fashion bloggers on various online platforms; 2) to analyze the construction of fashion bloggers’ expert positions and its role in their personal brands. Turning to fashion blogging allows us to consider how its representatives build their personal brands and establish themselves as experts in the field of fashion and style in Russianlanguage social media.

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