Online Terrorism and Extremism

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

With the enormous growth in the size and use of the Internet, utopian visions of the promise of the online media were challenged by the proliferation of pornographic and violent content on the web and by the use of the Internet and online platforms by extremist organizations of various kinds. Terrorist groups started using online platforms to distribute their propaganda, to communicate with their supporters, to foster public awareness of and sympathy for their causes, and even to execute operations. After appearing with their own websites, terrorists and extremists added social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, 8Chan, TikTok and more to spread their messages, recruit members and gather intelligence. Recently the Dark Net, Cloud storage services and even the emerging Metaverse were added to their online arsenal. This course examines, from communications research perspective, the relationships between modern terrorists and the new media, how terrorists use the online platforms, how democracies can respond to the challenge, and what are the prices of various measures.