Home : Research : Projects : Analysis of Terrorist Recruiting

The Internet and related media are viewed as important tools for the recruitment and mobilization of potential terrorists. Groups such as Al-Qaeda make extensive use of web sites for both recruitment and for maintaining some level of control over a highly diversified and decentralized organization. It is widely believed that the use of visual images and the repetition of a few key concepts in these web sites is an important part of web recruitment and mobilization strategy, but there have been few consistent efforts to analyze and catalog these images and constructs (in part because of the lack of requisite expertise).

This project will draw on the combined capabilities of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism and the International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism to examine the recurring themes, concepts and images present in Al-Qaeda and evaluate their meaning to both jailed terrorists and to the populations these sites are designed to influence. These themes and images will be distilled into concept maps that provide visual representation of key themes in terrorist recruitment and provide a basis for testing hypotheses about the methods used to recruit terrorists and the communalities in concepts across terrorist groups that appear to embrace very different goals and ideologies.

Psychology of terrorism.

 

• Pending

Kevin Murphy, Psychology

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