Abstract
This chapter examines the technological opportunities of the digital age and the Internet for a multidirectional exchange of Jihadi ideas, ideology, strategy and tactics. Myriads of social networks on the Internet serve as platforms for Jihadi disputes, which shows that the Internet and telecommunication technology of the twenty-first century are of central importance for new terrorism. Currently, the World Wide Web and its numerous media channels are the most important and most commonly and frequently used communication and propaganda platforms of the Islamist and Jihadi milieu. The Internet allows free cross-border and real-time communication and interaction as well as the reception of (supposedly authentic) reports on the fate of individual Jihadis and developments in far-off conflict regions. These technological achievements of the twenty-first century have enabled the (imagined) worldwide Umma to interconnect and pose a historically new potential for Jihadi actors of new terrorism to mobilise and radicalise Muslims on a global scale.
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Notes
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Court of Quebec, District of Montreal, Criminal and Penal Division, HM The Queen vs. Said Namouh, no. 500–73–002831-077 and 500–73–002965-081, 1.10.2009.
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BfV-Newsletter No. 3/2016 – Thema 1.
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Definition of netwar: “Lower-intensity conflict at the societal end of the spectrum in which a combatant is organised along networked lines or employs networks for operational control and other communications” (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1996, p. vii). For Internet as a “command and control” platform see Hannigan (2014).
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Goertz, S., Streitparth, A.E. (2019). New Technology in the Hands of the New Terrorism. In: The New Terrorism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14592-7_4
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