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Grooming for Terror: The Internet and
Young People
Christopher J. Lennings a , Krestina L. Amon a , Heidi Brummert b
& Nicholas J. Lennings b
a University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
b Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Version of record first published: 22 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Christopher J. Lennings , Krestina L. Amon , Heidi Brummert & Nicholas J.
Lennings (2010): Grooming for Terror: The Internet and Young People, Psychiatry, Psychology and
Law, 17:3, 424-437
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Grooming for Terror: The Internet and Young People
Christopher J. Lennings
a
, Krestina L. Amon
a
, Heidi Brummert
b
and Nicholas J. Lennings
b
a
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia;
b
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
The use of the Internet to spawn hate sites and recruit advocates for hate began as early
as the mid-1980s in bulletin boards, and the first acknowledged hate site was
Stormfront, in the early 1990s. Since then hundreds of hate sites and other websites
advocating terror have been developed, some with stated aims of recruiting young
people and influencing extreme action. This article reviews what is currently known
about the development of hate sites into sophisticated recruitment and attitude-
influencing mechanisms. The questions asked are: how do hate sites recruit members
who might normally not be involved in hate and extreme action, how may hate sites
radicalize the actions of young people already accepting of the mindset advocated by the
website, and how effective is Internet recruitment?
Key words: adolescence; hate sites; Internet; terrorism; young people.
The Internet has become a fundamental
aspect of life in the 21st century. Evolution
of public access to the Internet has
increased over the last 15 years and young
people’s use of the Internet has expanded
exponentially. Various surveys show that
there have been dramatic increases in home
purchases of computers as well as Internet
connectivity. In Australia, a survey con-
ducted by the Australian Broadcasting
Survey in 2000 reported that 86% of young
people (aged between 12 and 17 years) had
access to the Internet (cited in Fleming,
Greentree, Cocotti-Miller, Elias, & Morri-
son, 2006). This figure has raised concern
about the potential for exposure of young
people to sexual and violent crime. The Lee
and Leets (2002) study indicated that 44%
of young people in the United States have
visited websites that were X-rated or had
sexual content, 25% visited hate sites, 14%
visited websites on how to build a bomb,
and 12% visited websites on how to, and
where to, buy guns.
The Internet is a tool with many
qualities. In general, people use the Inter-
net for interpersonal communication,
meeting new people in chat rooms, sub-
scribing to interest distribution lists, and
being consumers through online markets,
among other activities. People engage in
these tasks through the Internet because its
qualities allow for anonymity, its unique-
ness of socializing means, and its ability to
close geographical and time constraints.
For young people, these qualities hold
strong for both the eager adolescent to
expand their social networks, and form
close relationships similar to their face-to-
face relationships, and the shy, who may
feel socially awkward, but keen to connect
with others behind the anonymity of
Correspondence: C.J. Lennings, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney. PO Box 170
Lidcombe, 2141, New South Wales, Australia. Email: clennings@lscpsych.com.au
Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
Vol. 17, No. 3, August 2010, 424–437
ISSN 1321-8719 print/ISSN 1934-1687 online
Ó2010 The Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
DOI: 10.1080/13218710903566979
http://www.informaworld.com
Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 19:26 15 April 2013
cyberspace (Boyd, 2008; Cummings, But-
ler, & Kraut, 2002; Wolak, Mitchell, &
Finkelhor, 2002; Young, 2006).
Hate and Extremism
Online tools create risk for the exposure of
hate sites and extremist behaviour. Where
pamphlets, leaflets, newspapers, books, tele-
vision, radio, and the telephone were once
popular means of spreading hate propagan-
da and recruiting people to join their group,
the Internet has now become a more
advanced means of communication and,
potentially, recruitment (Lee & Leets, 2002).
Hate sites come in various forms, and
the definition of what is or what is not a
hate site can be problematic. HateWatch
uses the following definition: ‘‘an organisa-
tion or individual that advocates violence
against or unreasonable hostility towards
those persons or organisations identified by
race, religion, national origin, sexual or-
ientation, gender or disability . . . (or) for
the purpose of vilification’’ (cited in Scha-
fer, 2002, p.73)
Hate sites revolve around particular
issues of race, religion, sexual orientation,
and power. Hate sites centred around
racism focus on the need to protect a
particular race from threats from other
races. For example, followers of the Ku
Klux Klan (KKK) characterize themselves
as activists who have been unfairly denied
attention, evoking a ‘‘white rights’’ ideol-
ogy and denying that they are a racist
organization (Schafer, 2002).
Hate and extremist behaviour through
online bulletin boards have been noted
since the emergence of the Internet and was
well established by the mid-1980s (Schafer,
2002). The first recognized hate bulletin
board was in 1984 (Berlet & Lyons, 2000),
and the first documented hate site was
Stormfront, established by Donald Black
in the mid-1990s. It is believed that the
most appealing targets are lonely, margin-
alized youth who are in search of an
identity and a sense of belonging (e.g.,
Cheng cited in Lamberg, 2001; Blazak,
2001). But although people such as Donald
Black have famously stated that their
website has allowed them to reach more
people and to recruit more people, there is
to date no statistical base to indicate
whether, in fact, such claims are true
(Schafer, 2002).
The Broadcasting Services Amendment
(Online Services) Act 1999 (Cth) (‘Online
Services Act’) was the first attempt by an
Australian government to address the
increasing pressure by community activists
to regulate what can be viewed on the
Internet. Since the introduction of the
Classification (Publications, Films and
Computer Games) Amendment (Terrorist
Material) Act 2007 (Cth), material that
could be construed as advocating or
encouraging others to partake in terrorist
activities must be classified as Refused
Classification (RC) and will thereby
amount to Prohibited Content under the
Online Services Act. The primary aim of
the Broadcasting Services Act Amendment
(Online Services) Act 1999 (Cth), is to
restrict access to Internet content that is
offensive to a reasonable adult and to
protect children. In light of such a stipula-
tion, serious questions arise as to whether
current Australian content regulation laws
are sufficient to regulate the proliferation
of terrorist content on the Internet, given
that such content is primarily accessed by
individuals who actively seek this informa-
tion rather than accidentally stumbling
across it. The rest of this review considers
the empirical evidence for the effectiveness
of Internet-based material in encouraging
hate and recruiting young people for
terrorist activities.
Empirical Research on the Effectiveness of
Hate Sites
Lee and Leets (2002) investigated the
‘‘persuasiveness’’ of hate messages. Their
Internet and Young People 425
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study made use of information processing
theory, which suggests that processing can
be central, effortful and slow, or peripheral
and automatic. Messages presented in
culturally accessible motifs, making use of
stereotypes and the like, are more likely to
be peripheral and fast in the processing
(thus unlikely to engage a censor). Infor-
mation in novel form, or filled with data
(such as statistics), however, will require
slow central processing, which will engage
the censor and therefore counter-argument.
The researchers used hate site features
identifying material that was either stereo-
typical, frequently involved with graphics,
or information that was content rich. The
notion is that content-rich information is
more persuasive and has the potential to
change opinion. The 108 participants in the
study were adolescents aged between 13
and 17, selected from a market research
company database. The aim of the study
was to identify the ‘‘influence’’ gradient for
the information. Overall, participants were
moderately persuaded by Internet mes-
sages. Counter-argument was more likely
when the mode of delivery of the material
was data rich, requiring effortful analysis.
Lee and Leats (2002) found that young
people were more receptive to implicit
messages that access the peripheral proces-
sing system and bypass the censor and
potential for counter-argument, but such
material faded quickly. That is, while
stereotypical or graphic information (e.g.,
a burning swastika, etc.) produced more
influence, the effect of the influence de-
cayed rapidly. In contrast, data-rich in-
formation produced the least influence, but
its persuasive capability was retained long-
er. If a change in thinking occurred, it was
more stable. The study also found that
young people who were already predis-
posed to extremist or hate messages made
more use of peripheral processing: they
attended less to the data, than those
inclined to disagree. In a sense this is the
‘‘preaching to the converted’’ finding,
although it may imply that those disposed
to extremism may experience a deepening
of their commitment with exposure to
rapidly internalized hate messaging.
The researchers proposed that caution
needs to be exercised when considering
how hate tactics work. Although the
stereotype is of the radical firebrand
mouthing slogans, it is in fact young people
whose political opinions are uncommitted
who are more likely to be influenced by the
use of techniques designed to present
information, allow counter-argument and
then provide responses to this counter-
argument (e.g., the Internet equivalent is a
website with a chat room to allow for the
process of debate to accompany the mes-
sage). The study also found an effect for
the combined strategies. That is, when both
effortful and peripheral processing were
used in the same message, an influence
effect was obtained that was greater than
either the two modalities separately. The
study was unable to assess for the effects of
repeated exposure. For instance, in the real
world young people typically scan websites
quickly. Time spent on a site is important,
but the number of times a site is revisited
may be more critical. How to get the young
person to return to a website to obtain
another ‘‘dose’’ is not yet known, although
some hate sites have been quite creative. In
the United States for example, the Martin
Luther King: An Historical Examination
website is advertised as a homework-help
website, but is actually hosted by a white
supremacist group, established to provide
students seeking homework assignment
material with information about what are
asserted to be Dr King’s infidelities, his
alleged plagiarism of speeches and
other denigrating material (Lamberg,
2001). Disguising websites as benign, but
then providing hate messages can lead to a
dose–response effect.
In what is a technical and dense
discussion of Internet communication
mapping structures, Chau and Xu (2006)
426 C.J. Lennings et al.
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also identified what they termed ‘‘implicit’’
(fast peripheral processing) and ‘‘explicit’’
(data-heavy slow processing) content in a
variety of blogs and traced the traffic
between blogs to demonstrate how indivi-
duals or groups can provide important
flow-on effects to their messages through
reciprocity between bloggers. That is, the
dose–response argument can be moderated
by routing users through a variety of
similar blogs, thus increasing the salience
of the message through repetition.
The concern about the effectiveness of
hate sites is promoted by what is in effect
single case study material of crime that is
purportedly committed as a result of young
people being encouraged by hate crimes.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
(1999), for instance, provides details of
cyberhate-inspired murders such as the
William brothers in 1999, Benjamin Smith
in 1998, and Richard Baumhammers in
2000. Levin and McDevitt (1993, cited in
Chau and Xu, 2006, p.2) claimed that 60%
of ‘‘hate criminals’’ are youth.
Recruitment Strategies
Both Gwinn (2006a) and Lethbridge (1995)
suggested that young people recruited
through hate websites are frequently those
who are from a background where parents
may have been physically or psychologi-
cally absent, where material gifts may have
replaced love and affection, and/or where
life skills of morals and values were not
prioritized over monetary pursuit by par-
ents. Without strong positive relationships,
young people may explore harmful avenues
in a search for understanding and accep-
tance. Both authors proposed that extre-
mist groups offer young people from these
backgrounds a substitute family. Although
they posit that the emotionally vulnerable
are easily converted because these groups
provide them with a security they did not
receive at home, they do not provide
evidence for these suppositions, and some
caution about who is actually recruited and
how, has to be exercised.
An attempt to provide a theoretical and
empirical understanding of the process of
recruitment in groups was reported by
Douglas, McGarty, Bliuc, and Lala
(2005). Their study made use of the Tajfel
and Turner (1979) social identity theory.
At its simplest, this theory posited that
people form identity around certain ideas
and behaviours, and actively exclude
others who do not share these ideas and
behaviours. Important variables that define
movement between groups include the
perceived status of the group, the rigidity
or permeability of boundaries between
groups, and the security of relationships
between group members. For instance,
studies of cyber-bullying have found that
‘‘in-group’’ bullying involved excluding an
individual from their online networking
site including FaceBook or MySpace. The
theory posits that if boundaries are seen as
rigid and impermeable, the group members
adopt strategies to support and maintain
the group’s status, thus; a shift occurs from
individual goals to group goals. Further-
more, the theory speculates that group
enhancement can occur either through
group competition (implying adoption of
conflict, hostility or antagonism) or crea-
tive strategies that act to redefine the status
of the group without challenging other
groups. For example, white supremacists
may be seen as a group that perceives itself
as ‘‘under threat’’, namely to their status.
Strategies they used to alter their status
relative to other groups can be either
competitive (engaging in conflict, such as
the KKK) or creative, and re-education of
out-groups (through things such as adver-
tising, and influencing policy, etc.). The
critical factor in this analysis is the security
of in-group members. When in-group
members feel secure in their position in
the world, creative strategies are more
likely to occur than competitive ones.
When a group’s members feel under threat
Internet and Young People 427
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or lacking in status, competition is more
likely.
In their research Douglas et al. (2005)
identified 49 hate sites and ended with a
sample of 43 online websites including sites
belonging to the KKK and the Nazi Party.
They analysed the websites in terms of the
messages relayed: whether they advertised
conflict (e.g., calls for ‘‘active self-defence’’)
or creative solutions (‘‘no one culture is
superior to another . . . [but] racial integra-
tion threatens all People. Humane efforts
towards separation and self-determination
are better for us than endless repression,
tension and racial violence’’; Douglas et al,.
2005, p.72). Of the 43 websites, 91%
targeted African Americans as their out-
group. Interestingly, despite the original
selection of the websites on the basis of
their appearance in a book listing hate sites
advocating violence, themes of social crea-
tivity were more apparent than open calls
for competition and conflict. Analysis
showed that in general, hate sites more
often do not advocate direct violence (at
least in the United States) than they do
(84% and 16%, respectively). The United
States legal environment is in part respon-
sible for this because laws now exist to
punish people who directly advocate vio-
lence, allowing authorities to directly close
down such sites. The authors opined that
the unusually high levels of creativity were
in fact deliberate strategies designed to
influence neutral Anglo-Europeans into
concurrence with their views (refer to Lee
and Leets, 2002 on strategies of influence).
They further opined that the purpose of
such creative strategies was to circumvent
laws and to develop a climate conducive to
conflict. Schafer (2002) discusses research
such as this in blunt terms, viewing the
communication strategies developed by
hate sites as masks or disguises of ideology
in order to appeal to people in the political
mainstream.
One of the key ways the Internet can be
used is to garner sympathy for specific
causes. The Jones (2005) study investigated
the evolution of two websites during the
Kosovo/Serbia war between 1998 and
2000. The analysis found a gradual change
in sophistication of the websites as they
moved from crude and obvious sympathy-
gathering to more sophisticated managers
of impression. The stated purpose of the
Jones study was to examine how activist
groups manipulate impressions online.
Underlying the approach was the belief
that online websites attempt to gain cred-
ibility by altering the perception of their
zealotry, with increasingly mainstream im-
pressions believed to enhance credibility
and hence enhance influence. The transfor-
mation of websites from crude statements
to sophisticated impression management is
part of a subtle grooming process, aimed at
achieving the gathering of sympathy,
rather than necessarily turning individuals
into zealots or terrorists. It also results in a
transition from a static website to one that
promotes interactivity between the reader
and the website.
Abstracted from the Jones (2005) study,
a set of rules can establish an increase in
the credibility of a website. These rules
include the following.
(1) Providing information about who,
putatively, is behind the site, re-
moving sensationalist pictures, such
as superimpositions of a hated
other with historical figures such
as Hitler.
(2) Proclaiming ‘‘factual’’ status, often
by including maps, statistics, and
other information that increases the
apparent status of the website.
(3) Attaching links or web pages to
archives, libraries, or bookstores
that imply a bedrock of academic
or authoritative support.
(4) Increasing website interactivity,
such as including links to news
polls, email connectivity, a ‘‘relative
location’’ platform and the like.
428 C.J. Lennings et al.
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Action items may be subtle or
obvious. For instance, on one
website sponsored by Serbia an
activity is available in which one
can ‘‘pick the innocent from war
criminals’’ with a cycling of photo-
graphs of Bill Clinton, Madeline
Albrecht, Tony Blair and the like,
with a pig (the innocent).
(5) Requiring commitment: for in-
stance, asking visitors to sign a
petition, and may congratulate
people who did so for making a
useful contribution towards resol-
ving or ending a conflict.
(6) Propaganda: websites may create a
twist or manipulate news reports, in
order to provide disinformation or
create doubt in people who might
otherwise form a critical view. For
instance, following an Economist
article on the war in April 1999, a
Serbian website carried an article
‘‘some pictures do lie’’ and asked
the apparently innocent question of
‘‘Considering what might be near a
farm house, could the ‘‘graves’’
really be hay bales or hay stacks’’.
The Jones (2005) analysis is matched by
that by Jordan, Torres, and Harsburgh
(2004), who also found a transformation in
the Al Qaeda website, which moved from a
raw depiction of the evils of the West and
promulgation of intolerance to a sophisti-
cated Internet environment, attracting a
broad range of sympathisers.
An analysis of marketing research may
help decipher how the Internet may be used
to groom or influence people. Cugleman,
Thelwall, and Dawes (2007) reported on an
analysis of social marketing techniques on
the Internet that apply commercial market-
ing principles to social, health and envir-
onmental problems. This analysis has
interesting parallels with the research of
Jones (2005), which documented the
evolution of activist websites in their search
for credibility and, presumably influence,
in the Kosovo war. Cugleman et al. sug-
gested that interest in a website is enhanced
if it is visually attractive, to create an initial
positive impression as well as evoking
emotion. The website must be useable and
provide good levels of functionality and
interactivity. For instance, mental health
websites with easy-to-play games are pro-
vided to increase interest in the website, but
these games are thematically developed to
promote good mental health. The website
must appear trustworthy. In terms of sales
and marketing this is the key variable
related to frequency of visits. The use of
hyperlinks may increase credibility but also
provide for ease of access to ideologically
motivated websites that increase their
utility as a ‘‘first go’’ place.
Recruitment and Children
Lamberg (2001) noted that 56% of chil-
dren aged between 9 and 17 cited the
Internet as their favoured source of in-
formation for homework and classroom
assignments. The Schafer (2002) analysis of
132 hate sites on the Internet identified
4.5% as specifically targeting pre-adoles-
cent children. Hate websites targeting
children are characterized by bright col-
ours, decorative fonts, animation, and
references to popular children’s cartoons
and television characters such as Pokemon,
and include gimmicks such as crossword
puzzles, and video adventure games.
Young adolescent and teenage website
viewers are presented with free links
and plug-ins to popular video games and
film clips, and discussion boards and
chat rooms to target a number of races,
religions, and sexual orientations
(Lamberg, 2001).
Downloading music is a popular activ-
ity that young people engage in online.
Music is a persuasive means to influence
young people. Hate sites may sell or
Internet and Young People 429
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provide free downloading of hate music.
Hate music receives attention when pro-
moted through concerts, where other hate
propaganda such as clothing and acces-
sories can be sold. The wider spread of hate
music online is said to bring together the
haters into a shared community (ADL,
2008) Hate music festivals allow people to
link up through both attending the festi-
vals, and activity on bulletin boards to
facilitate lifts to the festivals and the like,
creating through the Internet a network for
the possibility of recruiting people and for
facilitating the spread of agent provoca-
teurs (Schafer, 2002).
Fleming et al. (2006) reported on
several research studies that show a link
between violent media and increased hos-
tile thoughts, increased aggression, and
decreased prosocial behaviour. Anderson
and Bushman (2002) posited the episode
general aggression model, in which consis-
tent exposure to aggressive stimuli results
in relatively stable alterations of aggression
prone cognitions and arousability. This
model links dose–response issues (multiple
exposures to the same or similar linked
websites) with violent content accessible
through these websites and other sources of
violence role playing. Many of these studies
focus on violent television programs and
movies, and violent video games, but it is
not far from the violence that is linked with
what is available online (Wolak et al.,
2002). The promotion of violent video
games available on hate sites may lure
young people to extremist behaviour. It is
not just about violent video games invol-
ving killing anyone that gets in a player’s
way. Several hate videos exist whereby
players are instructed to kill certain groups
(e.g., African American, Latin American,
Muslim, Jewish people, etc.) who personify
evil, to get ahead in the game, which
encourages discrimination and the estab-
lishment of cognitive schemas supportive
of discrimination. For example, the video
game White Law is a first-person shooter
game in which the player is a police officer
with the objective of gaining points by
shooting black African American people
and anyone not of white American colour.
High scores advance the player to a bonus
round to shoot Jewish people (Gwinn,
2006b). The Australian High Tech Crime
Centre claims that cyber-criminals can also
conspire and train for terrorist attacks
though online social networking sites, and
particularly the use of online violent multi-
player games (Quinn, 2007).
Recruitment, Hate Sites and the Australian
Context
Some work has been reported by the
Australian High Tech Crime group (Quinn,
2007) on recruitment and hate site use in
Australia, although such work provides
little actual published detail. Norris, Lin-
coln, and Wilson (2005) provided a review
of Australian hate sites on the Internet.
That study reviewed the case of Frederick
Toben and his organization the Adelaide
Institute (a holocaust hate site). Norris
et al. used the hate site typology proposed
by Borgeson and Valeri (2004) and argued
that hate sites could be categorized as one
of three types: ‘‘in your face’’, ‘‘mislead-
ing’’, and ‘‘ambiguous’’. Examples of these
typologies can be seen from material
already reviewed here. For instance Storm-
front is an unambiguous in-your-face hate
site, and the Martin Luther King: An
Historical Examination website is an ex-
ample of the misleading type. The ambig-
uous website refers to the kind of websites
that dominate the hate sites in the United
States that use creative messages, as
opposed to direct appeals to conflict, in
order to bypass legislative controls against
the direct incitement of violence. The
authors identified six Australian websites
as being ‘‘in your face’’, four ambiguous
websites and three websites they claimed as
‘‘misleading’’. They argued that this was
the total of findable Australian hate sites as
430 C.J. Lennings et al.
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of that date. Little further analysis of these
websites was provided, but the authors
posed the question as to what effect, if any,
such sites might have on off-line behaviour.
For the moment this remains an unknown
quantity in Australia.
Radicalization Towards Violent, Extreme or
Terrorist Behaviours
The use of the Internet to gain sympathy
for a cause is one of the many functions
that the Internet can perform. Concerns
about the role the Internet may play in
promulgating terrorism or hate messages
is one of the functions referred to as
cybercrime. Terrorism is usually defined as
premeditated, politically motivated vio-
lence perpetrated against non-combatants
by sub-national groups or clandestine
agents (United States Department of
State, 1996). This definition implies that
subnational groups mean ideologically
identified groups acting without clear
support by States. For the purpose of
this review, State-sponsored terrorism is
not addressed: the political issues to date
remain unclear as to whether an action
committed by a government in pursuit of
geo-political strategies is self-defence, or
terrorism. It should be noted, however,
that State-sponsored terrorism may in-
clude the hosting of websites for use by
terrorist organizations. To date seven
countries have been identified that be-
tween them host 19 Internet service
providers that provide services for multi-
ple terror-oriented websites (Hinnen,
2004). Other definitions do not identify a
distinction between military and non-
military targets and suggest that terrorism
can be defined as violent actions against
both civilians and military personnel
(Charlesworth, 2003).
There has been significant growth in the
hosting of websites by terrorist organiza-
tions. As of 1998 the United States State
Department had identified that of the then
30 designated foreign terrorist organiza-
tions, at least 12 maintained websites
(ADL, 1999). The Canadian Centre for
Intelligence and Security Studies (2006)
estimated that by 2006 there were some
5,000 active terrorist websites. They further
noted that by 2006 all active terrorist
groups identified by the United States had
some kind of Internet presence.
A number of analyses have attempted
to define the nature of Internet-facilitated
terrorism. Conway (2006) reported on four
taxonomic systems but reduced the 20
separate classifications into five core func-
tions of the Internet in supporting terrorist
activity: information provision, financing,
networking, recruitment, and information
gathering. Three of these categories have
relevance for the process of grooming. The
first category, information provision, re-
lates to grooming through generating
emotional arousal (e.g., showing graphic
images meant to elicit sympathy or form
opinion such as superimposing images: see
Jones, 2005 for a discussion) or providing
disinformation. More properly viewed as
information gathering, the distinction be-
tween providing and gathering information
is relatively thin. For instance, manuals can
be downloaded online on how to make
bombs, poison food, avoid surveillance,
develop clandestine terror cells, and insti-
tute terror attacks (e.g., see the ‘‘Encyclo-
paedia of Jihad’’ discussed by Weimann,
2004). There is some pick-up of this
material by individuals not necessarily
related to grooming. An example of the
effectiveness of information provision, is
the nail bomb attack by right-wing extre-
mist David Copeland in the United
Kingdom against racial groups in 1999.
Allegedly the modus operandi for the
attacks was downloaded from a terrorist
manual available on the Internet
(Weimann, 2004).
Networking allows for terrorist groups
to not only flatten their own structure and
provide inter-group communications but
Internet and Young People 431
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also to network with other groups. For
instance, a terrorist website may provide
links to other related websites, including
charities. People may become involved in
terrorist websites through following links
from apparently legitimate websites. Jones
(2005) gives an example of this in two
forms. In one form, links from a terror
website to a legitimate new site may give
the person a false feeling of legitimacy for
the terror website, invoking an aura of
authenticity (e.g., the website alb-net.com
was set up by Kosovo students to garner
support for their view of the war and Serb
attacks on Kosovo; the website provided a
link to CNN.com that allowed people
following their link to vote on a CNN
news poll; Jones, 2005). A second example
given by Conway (2006) is the link between
a legitimate charity and the terrorist group.
For instance Jermiah Islamiah has set up
the charity Wafa al-Ibatha al-Islamyia as
an outgrowth of its terrorist activities.
Similarly, the innocuous sounding Bene-
volence International Fund was a charity
that among its projects was funding at least
two attempts by Al Qaeda to obtain
radioactive materials – presumably for a
‘‘dirty’’ bomb, and in 2002 the leader of the
charity was indicted in the United States
for providing material support to Al Qaeda
(Hinnen, 2004).
Recruitment refers to an active process
of mobilizing supporters to become in-
volved in terrorist activities. It is this phase
that moves from passive support such as
providing information to creating a well-
spring of shared identification to active
grooming. The Internet provides a number
of means of impacting on the grooming
and recruitment process. First, it provides
an easy way to disseminate information
that is targeted and packaged in a way that
meets potential supporters’ needs. It also
does it quickly. It allows for the develop-
ment of interactive communication and
opportunities to have direct contact with
group members. Finally, by the use of chat
rooms and bulletin boards members of the
public can interact with each other, some-
times in the form of debate. Such interac-
tion is accessible to the organization and
enables identification of likely recruits and
adjustment of the pitch of the website to
increase its general appeal (Tiven, 2003).
It is difficult to separate the operation
of fundraising and recruitment. For in-
stance, fundraising may take place by using
the Internet to identify people likely to be
sympathetic to a cause (including capturing
information from opinion polling or by
capturing information from donations to
legitimate charities). Individuals may be
emailed requesting a contribution, creating
further contacts that may slowly draw a
person into some kind of more active
support.
It is hard to know how effective
recruitment is. Conway (2006) cites Harris
et al. (no date) alleging an examination of
an Iranian website recruiting martyrs. The
same reference details how recruits may be
directed to a chat room for vetting prior to
personal contact (a process akin to groom-
ing in the sexual predator mould). Wei-
mann (2004) suggests that organizations
might purposefully search the net (through
specific chat rooms or related websites) for
young people who may be receptive to their
cause and hence target them.
A consequence of the use of the
Internet as a means of disseminating terror
and hate-group messages and recruiting
activists is that the same process can be
used to track the activities of an organiza-
tion. For example, it is claimed that much
of what the United States now knows
about Al-Qaeda is through their govern-
ment agents, making use of the Internet
material provided by the organization. The
United States government has used a
reverse grooming process, establishing bo-
gus websites to attract would-be terrorists
(as reported by Warner, 2003 in the
Washington Post). In an unusual response
to the 9/11 attacks, the British Agency MI5
432 C.J. Lennings et al.
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utilized dissident websites around the
world, posting a request for information
that would assist investigations into the 9/
11 event on the basis that the death of
Muslim people in that event might inspire
some supporters against Al Qaeda.
Profiling the Terrorist
At this stage there are no studies that detail
the profile of young people recruited via
Internet strategies to terror or hate sites. It
seems obvious that just as the majority of
young people propositioned for sex on the
internet do not become victimized, the
majority of young people who may be
targeted as potential recruits to terror will
not become terrorists. Charlesworth (2003)
sought to investigate the nature of terror-
ists, using suicide bombers as his subject
group. Charlesworth interviewed nine fa-
milies of suicide bombers, and, as a
control, nine families of similar demo-
graphics of young people (aged between
19 and 25) who did not become suicide
bombers in the Gaza strip.
Neither the support nor the control
group had any significant history of psy-
chosocial difficulties prior to the recruit-
ment (of the known bombers). All had,
however, grown up in stressful environ-
ments dominated by an armed insurgency
and the Intefada. On collateral interviews
all 18 participants were found to have
manifested transient states of anger and
depression, presumably a function of the
severe dysfunction of the society they lived
in. No differences were immediately ob-
servable between the two groups that could
account for their recruitment. Only two
features seemed to discriminate between
the groups. Bombers came from larger
families and expressed more religious ideas.
Because the bombers were recruited
through a religious pathway (an Imam
who recruited them as bombers was inter-
viewed as part of the study), the study
raises an interesting question: how is it that
more bombers are not recruited, given the
similarity of most of the background
variables? Presumably there was something
about the link between religion and the
recruiter that provided a critical factor, but
this was not teased out in the Charlesworth
(2003) study. Charlesworth argued that a
person is turned into a terrorist as a
function of several steps. The first step
harnesses aggression as an instrumental act
to gain an advantage for the group (either
the family or the ideological identification
that is like a family to the individual). This
occurs best during adolescence, when
young people are more likely to experience
surges of emotion and most likely to be
seeking an identity and thereby can identify
with a strong ideology or charismatic
person. The second involves a process in
which taboos against killing the self or
others are worn down in place of anger and
justifications and inducements (e.g., mar-
tyrdom, benefits for the family, the histor-
ical imperative and the like).
Charlesworth’s approach is at best descrip-
tive, but raises an interesting conundrum
because the focus of his analysis essentially
has the terrorist selected and viewing
himself or herself as an activist, rather
than a victim.
An alternative profiling approach to
understanding the terrorist was taken by
Reinares (2004) in studying people re-
cruited to ETA (the Basque Resistance
organization in Spain). While Reinares
notes the differences that may characterize
terror organizations, and the cautions that
must be drawn about generalizing across
terror recruitment activities, his analysis is
useful because it uses judicial files devel-
oped over time for the trial of 600 militants
(as they are referred to in the Reinares
paper) between the 1970s and the 1990s. It
is estimated that this sample represents
approximately half of all recruitment to the
organization within that time period. De-
spite a slow increase in the percentage of
women recruited over time, the majority of
Internet and Young People 433
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recruits were men (approx. 94%). Two
explanations were available. Following
Charlesworth (2003), aggression tends to
be more likely a male than a female trait
and second, the ETA society is a patriar-
chal one, and one where male subjects are
dominant. At the same time as ETA, other
European terror groups such as Bader
Meinhoff had correspondingly greater in-
volvement of women in their ranks (Nacos,
2005).
As with the Charlesworth (2003) analy-
sis, the bulk of recruits were young, mostly
in their late teens or early 20s (approx. 70%
aged between 18 and 23, and 54% aged
under 18). A relationship is made between
the propensity for (male) adolescent anti-
social activity and recruitment, largely be-
cause of the relative lack of inhibition
against involvement in violence and destruc-
tive acts. The point was made, however, that
the age group recruited also reflected an
‘‘availability’’ factor, that is, the age defines
aperiodwhenpeoplehavefinishedschool-
ing and before they have embarked on a
career that might have provided stability,
and ‘‘costs’’ that they might not want
otherwise to sacrifice. Although not expli-
citly stated, late adolescence is a point at
which idealistic ideas are formed, and as
such young people may be easier to influence
with idealistic notions that lead to camar-
aderie and identity than older groups. Of
interest is the change in age over time, with a
progressively larger percentage of new
younger recruits between 1960 and 1990.
Only 9% of militants under 20 years of age
were recruited between 1960 and 1970. This
increased to 60% by 1990.
On the whole ETA membership was
strongly confined to one of the seven
Basque regions spanning Spain and France
(and one of the four Spanish regions). In
all, two provinces contributed almost 90%
of the membership, suggesting a strong
ethnic and even regional focus in the
recruitment. What is important in this
finding is that simply being a member of
a minority was not sufficient to explain
recruitment, but specific family and regio-
nal ties were necessary to mobilize recruit-
ment and presumably disaffection.
Interestingly over time, a drift in surnames
occurred, indicating a more mixed group of
people being recruited, although region
and marriage into the region seemed to
remain strong predictors of who joined.
Reinares (2004) made the point that
during the 30-year period the shift in
occupations and membership resulted in an
evolution of ETA membership so that by the
late 1980s it was reflective of adolescent
anomic radicalism as manifested in other
European countries. Reinares appears to
suggest that the more contemporary face of
terrorism grew out of the urban juvenile
radicalism and its marriage with aggression
under the influence of an ETA hierarchy. To
that extent there is some symmetry with the
Charlesworth findings: young people re-
cruited may have had psychological pro-
blems but their behaviour was not as victims
but as expressing direct action and some
empowerment. Perhaps as a result, Reinares
noted that the characteristics of ETA
changed over time from a strongly Nation-
alist focus to take on elements of neo-Nazi,
xenophobic and anti-system violence more
in keeping with urban guerrilla movements
in other parts of Europe at the time. If this
analysis is correct it again suggests that the
young people joining ETA did so less out of
recruitment due to psychological frailties
and more out of an anomic aggression
associated with their age and the opportu-
nity provided by an organization that could
provide a means to legitimize such
tendencies.
Recruitment of Women
While the presumption is that terrorism is
male dominated, Nacos (2005) indicated
that there is no necessary distinction
between male and female terrorists. Utiliz-
ing a gendered approach, Nacos argued
434 C.J. Lennings et al.
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that it is media portrayals that detract from
the role women play in terrorism. Her
article, however, which is largely an analy-
sis of media reporting, found an increase in
the recruitment of women into terrorist
activity in the Intefada after 2002. Nacos
explored the various sociological para-
digms used to discuss the role of women
in terror organizations. These paradigms
can be referred to as (a) the terrorist for
love: entering terrorist organizations as a
consequence of love for a man already so
involved, (b) the women’s libber: the
woman attracted to terrorism as a function
of their radicalization associated with the
women’s movement and the fight against
gendered political oppression, (c) the
tougher than men (or the iron lady)
stereotype: when women seek to prove
themselves more callous and bloodthirsty
than their male compatriots, and (d) the
bored housewife terrorist: akin to the
notion of the anomist juvenile postulated
by Reinares (2004).
Although her account does not provide
much in the way of psychological insights
into the reasons for embracing terrorism, it
does document the steady increase in
tactical reasons for recruiting women and
the likelihood that women will remain a
growth area of recruitment because of the
prevailing prejudice that women are not as
dangerous as men.
Conclusion
The role of the Internet in fostering terror-
ism remains unclear. This review suggests
that the Internet may serve strategic and
tactical ends for established terrorist groups,
but the extent to which active recruitment
and, in particular, radicalization of youth
populations occurs, remains unclear. There
is as yet no empirical evidence to indicate
that recruitment of young people via the
Internet for terror activity has occurred,
although individual cases show that some
people have used information available on
thenetforhatecrimes.Thereviewhas
established the feasibility of such recruit-
ment, and has identified a number of studies
that have used orthodox psychological
models linking aggression, behaviour and
discrimination. The few tests of the influence
process exerted by the Internet that are
available, however, suggest that recruitment
is likely to be less effective than might be
expected. There is no doubt that young
people are recruited for terrorist activity, but
to date the role that the Internet has played
in such recruitment is unknown, requiring
further investigation.
Australia is entering a period of
increased regulation of the Internet and
the prohibition of content in order to
safeguard its citizenry through regulating
access to content that advocates terrorism.
While material advocating racial hatred
may be offensive, those drafting laws that
criminalize behaviour need to consider the
impact of net widening, such that a law
that prohibits behaviour not yet shown to
cause harm may unwittingly produce
more harm than good. From the perspec-
tive of the social scientist, it is imperative
that good studies are developed that can
provide an empirical base for evaluating
the risks to young people from activities
such as Internet-based hate sites. Such
studies do not currently exist. We need to
undertake ex post facto research on
Internet use by convicted terrorists and
publish such research in order to assess
the relative merits of the claims that
limiting and restricting Internet access
will actually reduce the threat to terrorism
and is not simply an ideologically led
behaviour.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support
of the Ombudsman’s Department of New South
Wales State Government, but the opinions
expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the
views or policy of Department or any staff
member of the Department.
Internet and Young People 435
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