Digital participation roles of the global Jihad: Social media’s role in bringing together vulnerable individuals and VEO content

The advent of the internet broadly changed the way society communicates. This is well-known and well-researched across standard populations. Niche or subpopulations, such as terrorist groups or other violent extremist organizations, are less well-understood and researched. However, as strategic outreach such as recruiting and advertising is more and more web-based, research’s limited understanding of such groups is a detriment to effective management strategies. This work is a foundational attempt to ground violent extremist organization’s internet usage into the theoretical lens of and discussion around digital participation and online communities. We analyze the spectrum of participation in violent extremist organizations’ online communities and elucidate existing behaviors of individuals involved with terrorism in a series of mini case studies. This work’s contribution is the expansion of the theoretical framework of digital participation in online violent extremist communities.