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Technical Report 83 views

Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies

Stuart Macdonald Orcid Logo, Sean McCafferty

Swansea University Author: Stuart Macdonald Orcid Logo

Abstract

It is well established that jihadist groups and their supporters post URLs on online platforms to outlink to items of propaganda stored on other platforms. Industry initiatives – such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s inclusion of URLs in its hash-sharing database, and Tech Against...

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Published: 2024
Online Access: https://voxpol.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DCU-PN0752-Online-Jihadist-WEB-240305.pdf
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65743
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first_indexed 2024-03-05T21:05:52Z
last_indexed 2024-03-05T21:05:52Z
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spelling v2 65743 2024-03-05 Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies 933e714a4cc37c3ac12d4edc277f8f98 0000-0002-7483-9023 Stuart Macdonald Stuart Macdonald true false 2024-03-05 LAWD It is well established that jihadist groups and their supporters post URLs on online platforms to outlink to items of propaganda stored on other platforms. Industry initiatives – such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s inclusion of URLs in its hash-sharing database, and Tech Against Terrorism’s Terrorist Content Analytics Platform – have sought to counter this practice. These measures, together with new regulatory regimes and the growing use of decentralised services, raise the question whether jihadist groups’ propaganda dissemination strategies are perhaps being forced to evolve. This study considers whether there is evidence of such an evolution, by examining the means that three jihadist groups (Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab) used to disseminate their propaganda during a two-month period in early 2023. It utilises a dataset of 4,164 content-sharing posts collected from 12 channels across four different platforms: one archiving platform, one decentralised messaging service and two decentralised chat apps. Together, these posts shared a total of 796 distinct items of propaganda. The study examines how each item was shared – by outlink, inlink and/or attached to or embedded in an in-channel post – and discusses the policy implications of the findings. Technical Report Terrorism, counterterrorism, jihadism, propaganda, content moderation 5 3 2024 2024-03-05 https://voxpol.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DCU-PN0752-Online-Jihadist-WEB-240305.pdf https://voxpol.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DCU-PN0752-Online-Jihadist-WEB-240305.pdf COLLEGE NANME Law COLLEGE CODE LAWD Swansea University Not Required The research was supported by Swansea University’s Legal Innovation Lab Wales (which is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government). 2024-04-28T16:48:31.0204909 2024-03-05T20:59:56.8433729 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Hilary Rodham Clinton School of Law Stuart Macdonald 0000-0002-7483-9023 1 Sean McCafferty 2 236 Stuart Macdonald 0000-0002-7483-9023 s.macdonald@swansea.ac.uk false 4
title Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
spellingShingle Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
Stuart Macdonald
title_short Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
title_full Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
title_fullStr Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
title_full_unstemmed Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
title_sort Online Jihadist Propaganda Dissemination Strategies
author_id_str_mv 933e714a4cc37c3ac12d4edc277f8f98
author_id_fullname_str_mv 933e714a4cc37c3ac12d4edc277f8f98_***_Stuart Macdonald
author Stuart Macdonald
author2 Stuart Macdonald
Sean McCafferty
format Technical Report
publishDate 2024
institution Swansea University
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str Hilary Rodham Clinton School of Law{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}Hilary Rodham Clinton School of Law
url https://voxpol.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DCU-PN0752-Online-Jihadist-WEB-240305.pdf
document_store_str 0
active_str 0
description It is well established that jihadist groups and their supporters post URLs on online platforms to outlink to items of propaganda stored on other platforms. Industry initiatives – such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s inclusion of URLs in its hash-sharing database, and Tech Against Terrorism’s Terrorist Content Analytics Platform – have sought to counter this practice. These measures, together with new regulatory regimes and the growing use of decentralised services, raise the question whether jihadist groups’ propaganda dissemination strategies are perhaps being forced to evolve. This study considers whether there is evidence of such an evolution, by examining the means that three jihadist groups (Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab) used to disseminate their propaganda during a two-month period in early 2023. It utilises a dataset of 4,164 content-sharing posts collected from 12 channels across four different platforms: one archiving platform, one decentralised messaging service and two decentralised chat apps. Together, these posts shared a total of 796 distinct items of propaganda. The study examines how each item was shared – by outlink, inlink and/or attached to or embedded in an in-channel post – and discusses the policy implications of the findings.
published_date 2024-03-05T16:48:29Z
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