Kristin's Recap of Day 2 of Conference

The following is a recap of Day 2 of the conference from Guest Blogger Kristin Fleischer who is a Doctoral Student in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University:


Day Two of the Terrorism and New Media conference began with Plenary speaker, Dr. Jarret Brachman of North Dakota State University. Dr. Brachmann, who served as Director of Research at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center from 2004-2008, gave a detailed look at the shift in al Qaeda “from a terrorist organization that occasionally uses media, to a media organization that does terrorism.” The discussion, titled “Watching Them, Watching Us, Watching Them,” laid out a fundamental change in the structure and purpose of al Qaeda, and what that means for researchers studying terrorism now.

One of the key points Dr. Brachmann stressed was the increasingly complex nature of the relationship between counter-terrorism practitioners and the subjects of their study. Increasingly, and with greater sophistication, al Qaeda – especially through its media arm As Sahab – is “using our own words against us.” Video clips taken from Western news reports and use of Western resources are now common; edited and used to support the jihadists’ message.

Dr. Brachmann also pointed out that there is still the tendency, in terrorism research, policy making and the mass media, to misunderstand the nature of al Qaeda: Where the West tends to see it as centripetal and cohesive, in reality a large part of that cohesiveness depends entirely on uniting against a common enemy. Without having a clear enemy, regional and ideological differences would do most of the work of pulling al Qaeda ‘apart,’ he suggested.

Once again, I was impressed by the broad range of approaches and topics covered in the panels. In a round table discussion concerning the ethical and legal issues of monitoring the internet for violent radicalization, participants included representatives from the Internet Service Providers of Ireland, the Center for Irish and European Security, London School of Economics and University College Dublin. The differing backgrounds allowed for some really fascinating approaches to the question. One of the parallels brought up was the problem of controlling or combating child pornography, and whether or not ‘blocking’ websites actually had any real effect on the underlying activity. A point was made that – similar to the exploitation of children – blocking websites has little to no effect on their production. A lesson exists here for governments seeking to control violent content on the web, panelists suggested: different approaches may be needed. The issue of surveillance and its ethics was also debated, and one panelist suggested that there is a great deal of ‘monitoring’ on the web that – were it to be conducted offline, say by CCTV – would likely be considered illegal, or at least need much greater permission from the public and legal discussion in the courts.

The panel which I was a member of concerned employing the internet for counter-terrorism and included presenters from George Washington University, and the Consortium for Strategic Communication at Arizona State University. Once again, the topics were diverse. Larisa Breton examined Wikileaks and its changing (and possibly detrimental) role in mainstream news reporting, while Dr. Scott Ruston explored the role of counter-narratives in new media. My own paper examined the online ‘community’ created by al Qaeda and its ideological affiliates targeting Western, English language audiences.

After lunch, the conference concluded with a round table discussion of the nature of online radicalization and directions for future research with speakers Dr. John Horgan, Dr. Jarret Brachman, and Dr. Phil Seib.

Just from my own experience, I would say the conference was a huge success. General discussion between panels and after the conference was overwhelmingly positive. Everyone I talked with got a great deal out of the diversity of panel discussion and the excellent lectures by the Plenary speakers. The opportunities for assessment of current research, networking, different perspectives and discussion were excellent. The only regret most people seemed to have was that they couldn’t stay in Dublin longer!

Thank you once again to everyone who helped plan and organize this conference, hopefully we will all be back next year.