Analyzing terror campaigns on the internet: Technical sophistication, content richness, and Web interactivity

Terrorists and extremists are increasingly utilizing Internet technology to enhance their ability to influence the outside world. Due to the lack of multi-lingual and multimedia terrorist/extremist collections and advanced analytical methodologies, our empirical understanding of their Internet usage is still very limited. To address this research gap, we explore an integrated approach for identifying and collecting terrorist/extremist Web contents. We also propose a Dark Web Attribute System (DWAS) to enable quantitative Dark Web content analysis from three perspectives: technical sophistication, content richness, and Web interactivity. Using the proposed methodology, we identified and examined the Internet usage of major Middle Eastern terrorist/extremist groups. More than 200,000 multimedia Web documents were collected from 86 Middle Eastern multi-lingual terrorist/extremist Web sites. In our comparison of terrorist/extremist Web sites to US government Web sites, we found that ter...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: IJMMS
• Authors: Jialun Qin, Yilu Zhou, Edna Reid, Guanpi Lai, Hsinchun Chen
• Keywords: Government Web, IJMMS 2007, Internet Usage, Web Sites