A study of the informational properties of the ISIS's content

Afzal, Waseem

doi:10.1002/pra2.2016.14505301056

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 19 publications

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“…Coupled with media affordances, flows of information can drastically sway opinions, leading even to national security threats (Afzal, 2016;Afzal and Wallis, 2016). Internet and social media provide opportunities for spreading extremist views to large audiences, with greater impact, and also with a possibility to maintain anonymity (Awan et al, 2019, p. 3).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of information skewness in shaping extremist content: A look at four extremists

Afzal¹

2023

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Introduction. Extremism—distinct from activism—poses a serious threat to the healthy functioning of a society. In the contemporary world, the ability of extremists to spread their narratives using digital information environments has increased tremendously. Despite a substantial body of research on extremism, our understanding of the role of information and its properties in shaping extremist content is sketchy. Method. To fill this gap, the current research has used ‘content analysis’ and ‘affective lexicon’ to identify and categorise terms from the publicly available online content of four extremists – two groups and two individuals. The property of information skewness provided the deciphering lens through which the categorised content was assessed. Analysis. Contextual categories of information relevant to all the extremists were developed to analyse the content meaningfully. Six categories of religion, ideology, politics-history, cognition, affection, and conation provided the framework used to analyse and deductively categorise the data using content analysis. The affective lexicon developed by Ortony et al. (1987) was used to identify words belonging to the categories of cognition, affection (emotions and feelings), and conation (behaviour/actions). Results. The findings reveal that the property of information skewness plays a significant role in shaping extremist content and two aspects of this property (a) intensity and (b) positivity or negativity can be used to (1) classify extremists into meaningful categories and (2) identify generalisable information strategies of extremists. Conclusions. It is hoped that the findings of this research will inform future enquiries into the role of information and its properties in shaping extremist content and help security agencies to effectively engage in information warfare with extremists.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%