
Joe WhittakerSwansea University | SWAN · Department of Criminology
Joe Whittaker
Doctor of Philosophy
Researching terrorists' and extremists' use of the Internet
About
23
Publications
7,166
Reads
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227
Citations
Additional affiliations
May 2017 - present
International Centre for Counter-Terrorism
Position
- Research Associate
Publications
Publications (23)
This study explores how and why some individuals are resilient to radicalisation by focusing on individuals who were labelled “terror- ists” for their alleged involvement or support for an attempted coup that took place in Turkey on 15 July 2016, yet who have shown no sign of violent radicalisation since. Drawing from 15 interviews, it assesses bot...
Incels (Involuntary Celibates) are a subculture community of men who form their identity around a perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. The community operates almost exclusively online, providing an outlet for misogynistic hostility. There are growing concerns about violence from incels, who have been highlighted as an (inte...
This guide is intended to help creators producing or thinking about making short-form video content seeking to counter extremism. Our goal is not to tell you what to create; your original content is what makes your channel creative and organic. Instead, we hope to provide you with tools and tips to create stronger content that harnesses evidence fr...
The strategic logic of interventions for counter-extremism interventions on short-form video platforms.
This is the largest survey of incels to-date (n=561), taken across the UK and the US. It explores their demographics, beliefs, mental health, neurodiversity, networks and propensity to violence.
There has been widespread concern within media and policy circles over the effects of the pandemic on radicalization. This is often articulated as a fear that more time spent online will lead to greater exposure to extreme and harmful content, which in turn, may increase the chances of individuals turning to violent extremism. Combined with the hig...
This report presents findings from the REASSURE (Researcher,
Security, Safety, and Resilience) project’s in-depth interviews with
39 online extremism and terrorism researchers. Based at universities,
research institutes, and think tanks in Europe and North America,
the interviewees studied mainly, albeit not exclusively, far-right and
violent jihad...
This chapter considers three types of online data available for researchers. First, it looks at machine learning and its use when considering the vast amount of data available to detect indicators of involvement in terrorism. Next, the chapter considers case studies and their use when addressing ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Given the difficulty of re...
This study explores how terrorists use financial technologies in their plots. Using a database of 231 US-based Islamic State actors, it anal- yses how they move money and make purchases, as well as whether the use of technology affects success. Fundamentally, terrorists opt for simplicity; there is little evidence of sophisticated financial plots....
This article seeks to re-ontologize online radicalization. Individuals becoming terrorists after being exposed to online content have become a prescient concern for academics, policy makers, and journalists. Existing theoretical contributions to the concept have assumed that there are two ontological domains-online and offline-that can be meaningfu...
Introduction This paper reviews the existing empirical studies on the role of social media recommendation algorithms and potential links to extremist content. It seeks to provide transparency for future researchers by taking stock of the present empirical knowledge base, noting the types of data and methods that are utilized and charting gaps in th...
Online radicalisation to terrorism has become a pervasive policy concern over the last decade. However, as a concept it lacks clarity and empirical support. In this article, we add an empirical and theoretical lens to this problem by analysing the trajectories of 231 Islamic State terrorists. We use cluster analyses to create typologies of individu...
Policymakers have recently expressed concerns over the role of recommendation algorithms and their role in forming “filter bubbles”. This is a particularly prescient concern in the context of extremist content online; these algorithms may promote extremist content at the expense of more moderate voices. In this article, we make two contributions to...
Although the production of videogames by extremist and terrorist groups has markedly declined since a high point in the 2000s, game-based interventions remain highly significant, whether through the adoption of gaming-based iconography in extremist and terrorist social media campaigns or through the activity of modders and groups’ supporters who co...
Research Summary
This study offers an empirical insight into terrorists’ use of the Internet. Although criminology has previously been quiet on this topic, behavior‐based studies can aid in understanding the interactions between terrorists and their environments. Using a database of 231 US‐based Islamic State terrorists, four important findings are...
Strategic communications for the purpose of countering violent extremism have become widespread in recent years, especially given the communications revolution which has amplified the messages of violent extremists and those that wish to counter them. Despite this, there is little-to-no research which collects message data and analyses its design i...
National governments and international governmental organisations have identified online radicalisation as one of today’s most pressing security challenges. It is thus unsurprising that there is a burgeoning literature on the topic. Within this literature, use of the terms “radicalisation”, “self-radicalisation”, “online radicalisation” and “echo c...
It is often argued that a limitation to studying and challenging violent extremism (VE) is a lack of data-extremists are a difficult research population to engage in primary research. However, proponents of this argument miss the wealth of rich, secondary data available. This chapter offers a reflective analysis of creating a database of violent ex...
National governments and international governmental organisations have identified online radicalisation as one of today’s most pressing security challenges. It is thus unsurprising that there is a burgeoning literature on the topic. Within this literature, use of the terms “radicalisation”, “self-radicalisation”, “online radicalisation” and “echo c...
The topic of online radicalization is ubiquitous within common discourse around terrorism and extremism. However, there is a distinct lack of empirical research which focuses on how the Internet affects this process. The prevailing wisdom among academics is that despite the large digital footprint in modern cases of terrorism and extremism, the Int...
This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee, provides an overview of current approaches to countering terrorist narratives. The first and second sections outline the different responses developed at the global and European Union levels....