This chapter examines current uses of data in the study of the Jihadist movement and highlights some significant limitations in studies which are emblematic of wider problems in the field. It then provides an outline of what data science is, and how the study of the jihadist movement must be built on data science which provides an authentic representation of the movement. It concludes with a framework for how data science could be employed to produce an authentic representation of the movement to avoid the many methodological shortcomings exhibited by current analysis which has pushed claims of decline and ‘total collapse’.
The internet has become a great medium for spreading
Anwar al-Awlaki
the call of Jihad and following the news of the mujahideen.
In the 1980s scholars had to find ways to physically gather print material, audio tapes, VHS and later DVD. However, the growing use of the internet by the Jihadist movement since the 1990s created the opportunity for sympathisers and scholars around the world to accesses, read, watch, listen and engage with that content digitally. What began as electronic scans of print material and video content transfered from VHS and DVD, is now a digital publishing system delivering content simultaneously in physical and digital form.
The rationale for this was set out in a statement issued by al-Fajr on May 6th 2011;
Internet is a battlefield for jihad, a place for missionary work, a field of confronting the enemies of God. It is upon any individual to consider himself as a media-mujahid, dedicating himself, his wealth and his time for God
As the available technology has changed, the Media Mujahidin have continued to evolve, reconfigure, and explore the opportunities as part of the Swarmcast. They have purpose-built programs such as the 2007 release of Asrar al-Mujahidin intended to facilitate secure communication with Islamic State Iraq amongst other jihadist groups, the Dawn of Glad Tidings Twitter app, Telegram bots, and browser plugins for Chrome and Firefox. Equally, the volume of content and range of platforms used to disseminate content has expanded rapidly including beacons such as Twitter and Telegram, and content stores such as YouTube and Vimeo, Archive.org, Amazon Cloud and OneDrive.
This has created the potential for researchers to access and study the content which circulates within the Jihadist information ecosystem, and indeed to take a macroscopic view of the information ecosystem itself. Unfortunately, while the opportunity to gather data on the authoritive elements of the jihadist movement exists, few studieswhich claim to conduct data analysis have genuinely embraced
the opportunity of Data Science based approaches.
Instead of genuine data science, there has been an explosion in ‘tweet-ready’ punditry which fails to grapple adequately with the challenge of integrating genuine subject matter expertisewith the methodologicalrigor required for Data Science. Dogged by poor data acquisition, substandard analysis and misleading graphs, many studies have become entangled in the challenges identified in the
articles which created the foundations for ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’. As a result, Just as John Vasquez noted in The War Puzzle, “much has been written about the causes of war; little has been learned about the subject” similar could be said for the volume of content and commentary produced about the use of the internet by the jihadist movement.
Ali Fisher, “Interrogating the electronic ribat: Data Science in the study of the Jihadist movement“, in Lohlker, R. (ed.) World wide warriors: How Jihadis operate online. (2019).