Some general discussion re. conference

We posted our CfP and conference updates on Linked-In and have recently received some comments on the conference that I thought it might be interesting to share. The original comments are below and my response follows.

Comment 1: "I'm certainly interested, but I'm very sceptical about academic conferences on this subject, especially when there is already a pretty strong body of knowledge on this very field in the intelligence and security community."

Comment 2:  "While I'm certain the individual presentations will be of utmost interest and important contributions to the field, it is not entirely accurate to claim that “This is the first academic conference to subject the relationship between terrorism and new media, particularly the Internet, to truly multi-disciplinary scrutiny.” In mid-September 2006 I participated in a NATO Advanced Workshop on “Hypermedia Seduction for Terrorist Recruiting” that brought together multidisciplinary experts from the fields of terrorism, counterterrorism, media, graphic design, and marketing to explore these issues in entirely new ways. It resulted in the edited volume (see below). Since 2006, lots of other conferences that look at this issue in multidisciplinary ways have also been organized. A problem in the community is that no one keeps track of their multidisciplinary makeup or builds and advances on their findings, so that every time a conference on this topic is held—thanks to the generosity of unaware funders—the organizers can get away in claiming that their conference is the first such effort in the field instead of advancing the state of knowledge to the next level, as is common practice in the scientific and technical disciplines. This is intended as a critique of the discipline of terrorism studies, not any individual conference." [Details of book arising out of NATO workshop snipped].

Conway response:  "I am the Chair of the conference under discussion and welcome your comments.

Regarding [the first commenter's] scepticism about academic conferences on terrorism and the Internet that is based, at least partly, in his belief that “there is already a pretty strong body of knowledge on this very field in the intelligence and security community”: obviously, the intelligence and security communities don’t have the same function(s) as academe, one of which is to produce and communicate--both to students and the general public--research and analysis about topics such as the intersection of terrorism and the Internet. This is in contrast to the “pretty strong body of knowledge” that may (or may not) be possessed by the intelligence and security communities, which is not widely disseminated outside of these.

This, in turn, raises the question of interest(s): namely the interests of academia versus those of the intelligence and security communities. My interest, as an academic, is generally with macro-level questions, like ‘Can people be radicalised online?’ It seems to me that persons working in the intelligence and security communities are generally more concerned with tactical- or operational-level issues. Our interests are not necessarily therefore at odds, but they are certainly different. This is without touching at all upon the interests of those who work within government circles (or indeed, increasingly, the private security sector) and the effects their positioning may produce in terms of their analyses versus the benefits of outsider status and thus the ability to engage in more robust critique of especially received government wisdom.

On [the second commenter's] assertion that the claim that ours “is the first academic conference to subject the relationship between terrorism and new media, particularly the Internet, to truly multi-disciplinary scrutiny” is inaccurate: I must disagree. I am familiar with the NATO workshop that [the second commenter] mentions; it was called a “workshop” for a reason, because the presenters were all invitees (and perhaps the audience, if there was such, also). This is common in this area, which is not to say that it should be encouraged. For our part, we made a conscious decision to publish an open call for papers, which we made the effort to distribute as widely as possible. In particular, we were interested in having not just a good mix of academics and, for want of a better word, ‘practitioners,’ but also contributions from both established scholars in this area and young researchers. These young researchers, given that they have grown-up with the Internet and are most of them heavy users of same, are surely well-placed to be conducting relevant research in the area and thus deserve a hearing. They are not generally invited--or not many of them, at least--to the invite-only ‘meetings,’ ‘workshops,’ ‘symposia,’ etc., common in this field. Ours is an ‘academic conference’ as traditionally understood therefore, in which the only criteria for selection was the quality of one’s submitted abstract."