As dozens of British women and girls travel to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, there are increasing concerns over female radicalization online. These fears are heightened by the case of Roshonara Choudhry, the first and only British woman convicted of a violent Islamist attack. The university student in 2010 stabbed her Member of Parliament, after watching YouTube videos of the radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki. Current radicalization theories portray Choudhry as a "pure lone wolf," a victim of Internet indoctrination, without agency. This article explores how gender factors in her radicalization, to present an alternative to existing theoretical explanations. An engagement with gender reveals its role in Choudhry's radicalization, first, in precluding her from a real-world engagement with Islamism on her terms, pushing her to the Internet; then in increasing her susceptibility to online extremist messages; finally, in fomenting an eventually intolerable dissonance between her online and multiple "real" gendered identities, resulting in violence. The article emphasizes the transgressive nature of this act of female violence in Salafi-Jihadi ideology; also, the importance of this gendered ideology as the foundation of ISIS recruitment online. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the operation of gender in the Jihad's production of violence, and roles for men and women alike.
Using a dataset of more than 80 accounts during 2015, this article explores the gendered ways in which self-proclaiming Twitter Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) supporters construct community around "suspension." The article argues that suspension is an integral event in the online lives of ISIS supporters, which is reproduced in online identities. The highly gendered roles of ISIS males and females frame responses to suspension, enforcing norms that benefit the group: the shaming of men into battle and policing of women into modesty. Both male and female members of "Wilayat Twitter" regard online as a frontline, with suspension an act of war against the "baqiya family." The findings have implications for broader repressive measures against ISIS online. ISIS, Gender and Twitter: A Research Gap Since its emergence in 2013, so-called Islamic State (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]) has established a reputation for its sophisticated use of a variety of media and social media platforms from which to propagate violent jihad. 1 Messaging applications such as Telegram or WhatsApp, and social media including Facebook, YouTube, Ask.FM, and JustPaste.It, among others, have been used to propagandize videos, and share photos, Portable Document Format (PDF) files, Word documents, or blogs. As quickly as a new platform emerges, it has been occupied by ISIS supporters, who frequently use one application to direct followers onward to another. The result has been wide social media permeation by ISIS. As well as generating online support, this has resulted in offline action, with active online ISIS fans known to have traveled to Syria and Iraq, or to have carried out terrorist acts. 2 Currently however, ISIS faces severe challenges to its activities, both on the ground, where it is losing territory, and within this online space. The site where this impact has been most evident is the online micro-blogging forum, Twitter, perhaps the most popular of the ISIS social media platforms. Twitter became a key outlet for ISIS from 2013 to 2015. In 2014, after the declaration of a Caliphate, Berger and Morgan estimated some 46,000-CONTACT
This article addresses an under-researched aspect of Boko Haram's activities: gender-based violence (GBV)
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