Assessing Threat in Written Communications, Social Media, and Creative Writing

Abstract

Most of those who plan violent attacks communicate their intentions before the attacks via social media and written communication, either through unintentional ''leakage'' or intentionally through ''legacy tokens'' used to explain their motivations. These should be understood as part of their fantasy rehearsals in the aftermath of an attack. Additionally, searching for and attending to such messages provides an opportunity to intervene and thwart potential attacks. This article provides a framework for reviewing and understanding these messages and assessing them for potential lethality and dangerousness.

Developing Practical Responses to Social Media Threats Against K–12 Schools: An Overview of Trends, Challenges, and Current Approaches

“…According to the FBI, social media-based threats not only place police officers and others in unnecessary danger, but also divert critical police resources away from other duties and responsibilities (FBI, 2018). The sheer number of threats that many districts receive, some on a weekly if not daily basis, significantly taxes an already constrained workforce and other resources, especially agencies involved in the initial assessment process (NASRO, 2022;Newman and Watkins, 2022;Taylor, Hopluch, and Cramer, 2021;Wong, 2021;School Safety Grant, 2020;FBI, 2018;Van Brunt, 2016). Both social media-based and swatting threats of active shooter incidents place especially high demands on local community resources, nearly overwhelming local education agency resources as well as law enforcement and first responder personnel (Sanchez, Brown, and Gingras, 2022).…”

“…The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit also notes that specific details included in a threatsuch as personal information about a targeted individual or detail about specific weapons and intended violent actions-can elevate concern (Amman et al, 2017). Hints of physical proximity to a target, such as geolocation, also add weight to a threat, as can the use of escalatory language, repeated communication, and evidence that the threatening individual has access to a weapon, such as a photo of an individual posing with a rifle ( Van Brunt, 2016;Amman et al, 2017).…”

“…Moreover, certain trends in the use of social media to issue threats create new challenges for both local education agencies and law enforcement. While specificity has traditionally been an indicator of heightened violence risk in other forms of threatening written communications ( Van Brunt, 2016), hoax threateners can fairly easily find details about specific school districts, individual schools, and sometimes individual students online (Newman and Watkins, 2022) and can therefore make their threats appear more convincing. Encryption software has also made it considerably more difficult for law enforcement agencies to trace the origins of threats (Newman and Watkins, 2022;Wong, 2021).…”

“…Table 3.1 summarizes common categories of threat indicators from across various literature domains on threatening communication, including anonymous threats. Trump (undated); Tunkel (2002); Van Brunt (2016); Van Brunt, Lewis, and Solomon (2021); Van der Vegt et al (2022); Winer and Halgin (2016).…”

“…unique nature of each threat and of each targeted school (Desai, 2022). One commonality is that local education agencies often have little to go with when it comes to accurately anticipating, let alone predicting, when a threat will lead to actual violence (Cornell and Maeng, 2020;Van Brunt, 2016;Amman et al, 2017). This makes choosing "the right" response action difficult, at best.…”