Since 2001, the nations counterterrorism efforts have primarily focused on international terrorism. However, recent tragic attacks in Charleston, SC, and Chattanooga, TN, remind us of domestic threats. Many extremist groups use the Internet to organize like-minded individuals,
disseminate ideas, and recruit new memberssome which become homegrown terrorists. Our study will examine these violent domestic extremistsindividuals and groups that "support or commit ideologically motivated violence to further political, social, or religious goals" (U.S. Dept. of Justice 2014:4).
Our study has four primary objectives:
1. Identify active online U.S.-based extremist groups
2. Create virtual profiles of extremist groups.
3. Elaborate the frames of extremism.
4. Discern effects online extremist material has on individuals who see it and which types of material is most influential.
To meet these objectives, we use overlapping methodologies. First, we conduct Web Crawling of (1) approximately 800 extremist organizational websites, and, (2) issue, topic, and concept based searches of extremist activity not directly linked to organizations (i.e. Twitter feeds). Using Python and QDA Miner software we analyse data from extremist organizations to find more subversive extremist materials. This provides an opportunity to examine relationships between organizations and individual (or lone wolf) radicalization processes for extremist religious, nationalist, political, environmental, militia/patriot, and ethnicity-based groups and ideologies.
Next, we use thick description to form a virtual ethnography of extremist profiles and contentfocused frame analysis to identify how different extremists use particular Internet functionalities (i.e. YouTube, home pages, Facebook, blogs) to recruit and sustain their movements. We will follow cases longitudinally to understand the emergence, development and dissemination of online extremism. We will then conduct a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). QCA is an analytical method geared towards causation analysis that disaggregates large volumes of discourses within sampled data into its constitutive components and identifies topic frequency,
discursive space, topic intersection, and frame intersections. Finally, we use an online survey of Americans ages 15 to 35 to estimate the extent to which people are exposed to online extremism. We assess characteristics associated with the exposure to and/or adoption of extremist ideas. In years 2 and 3, we will add survey modules with questions derived from the Web Crawling results.
Our objective is to parse out, catalogue, and analyse how violent domestic extremist groups use the Internet and what impacts it can have on users, particularly youth. This study will help authorities and communities identify and counteract radicalization.
Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.
nca/ncf
