Terrorism and the Internet

• Date: 01 February 2017
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12292

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

TERRORIST USE OF THE INTERNET

Terrorism and the Internet

Gary LaFree

University of Maryland

Although public concern and policy interest in the connection between the Internet

and terrorism has been rapidly increasing, thus far there has been little empirically

informed criminology research on the topic. One thing is clear: Both terrorism and

the Internet have had profound effects on the world; from everyday life to the functioning

of macro-level global political, economic, and social systems. In his influential book, essayist

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007) identified both the coordinated terrorist attacks of 9/11 and

the rise of the Internet as “black swan” events—those that fall outside the realm of usual

expectations, have an enormous impact, and yet defy prediction. An important implication

of black swan events is that however unpredictable and rare, they change the course of

human history. It seems logical that if predicting the occurrence and understanding the

effect of a black swan event is complicated, predicting the confluence of more than one

may be especially challenging. The article by Paul Gill, Emily Corner, Maura Conway,

Amy Thornton, Mia Bloom, and John Horgan (2017, this issue) is a welcome step toward

identifying the behaviors, patterns, and processes of those who use the Internet to further

terrorist goals.

The speed at which the Internet has spread is astounding. In 1994, there were slightly

more than 25 million Internet users; as this article was being written, there were more than

3.5 billion (Statista, 2016). Facebook first reached 100 million active users in 2008; today

it has nearly 1.8 billion subscribers (Internet Live Stats, 2016). This kind of revolutionary

change likely inspires hyperbole—especially in the absence of solid empirical data. So we

do hear extravagant claims about the impact of the Internet on terrorism. At the same

time, it is revealing to consider how much the communication of terrorist ideologies,

as well as the planning and execution of terrorist attacks, have been transformed by the

Internet.

These changes are perhaps easiest to illustrate in the case of al Qa’ida and the

Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL)—terrorist organizations that, more than any other, have

Direct correspondence to Gary LaFree, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of

Maryland and the START Center, 8400 Baltimore Avenue, Suite #250, College Park, MD 20740 (e-mail:

glafree@umd.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12292 C2017 American Society of Criminology 93

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 1