Jihadi forums on the World Wide Web - 20th October 2009
14/Oct/09 14:13 Filed in: CSTPV Seminar Series
Tuesday 20th October 2009, 5.00pm
Arts Lecture Theatre, New Arts Faculty Building
Jihadi Forums on the World Wide Web
Seminar by
Gilbert Ramsay, CSTPV, University of St Andrews
Bio
Gilbert Ramsay is a teaching assistant at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, where he is also completing his doctorate. He has previously undertaken consultancy work for the United Nations Working Group on Countering the Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes, and presently for a European Union sponsored project looking at ‘non legislative measures against violent radical content’. He has published and presented on the problems of conceptualising terrorism and jihadism ‘on’ the Internet and on the problems inherent in engaging in ‘wars of ideas’.
Abstract
Jihadi forums on the World Wide Web represent a convergence of ‘top down’ propaganda efforts by Al Qaeda and affiliated groups, and an organic phenomenon of ‘jihadism’ on the web. In the determination to understand Al Qaeda and its ideology as fundamentally alien impositions on ‘true’ or ‘orthodox’ interpretations of Islam, and at the same time to attribute a possibly spurious coherence to global ‘jihadism’, however, there has been a tendency to emphasise the importance of content over form, and of ideological discourse over online behaviour. At the same time, internal strategic debates over the functioning and purpose of these forums have been read at face value as developments of strategy in the face of outside pressure, rather than internal crises in online communities. This talk will attempt to redress this balance.
Arts Lecture Theatre, New Arts Faculty Building
Jihadi Forums on the World Wide Web
Seminar by
Gilbert Ramsay, CSTPV, University of St Andrews
Bio
Gilbert Ramsay is a teaching assistant at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, where he is also completing his doctorate. He has previously undertaken consultancy work for the United Nations Working Group on Countering the Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes, and presently for a European Union sponsored project looking at ‘non legislative measures against violent radical content’. He has published and presented on the problems of conceptualising terrorism and jihadism ‘on’ the Internet and on the problems inherent in engaging in ‘wars of ideas’.
Abstract
Jihadi forums on the World Wide Web represent a convergence of ‘top down’ propaganda efforts by Al Qaeda and affiliated groups, and an organic phenomenon of ‘jihadism’ on the web. In the determination to understand Al Qaeda and its ideology as fundamentally alien impositions on ‘true’ or ‘orthodox’ interpretations of Islam, and at the same time to attribute a possibly spurious coherence to global ‘jihadism’, however, there has been a tendency to emphasise the importance of content over form, and of ideological discourse over online behaviour. At the same time, internal strategic debates over the functioning and purpose of these forums have been read at face value as developments of strategy in the face of outside pressure, rather than internal crises in online communities. This talk will attempt to redress this balance.