Predicting online radicalisation

RESEARCH CONTEXT

An estimated 25,000 foreign fighters have been recruited to Islamic State (IS) from over 100 counties around the world. While shocking in itself, this reflects only the militant end-product of the radicalisation process. Before militancy emerges, IS supporters use mainstream social media in English to socialise, radicalise and recruit foreigners. For example, the fourth IS 'Clanging of the Swords' film racked up millions of views on video-sharing platforms, and created vast excitement among those who followed ISIS online. This use of online communications in English by supporters of Islamic State (IS) presents two unprecedented research opportunities: first, to predict the spread of extremism in English-speaking populations; and second, to understand how online communications shape people's understanding of IS and its opponents. However, currently there is no method to analyse longitudinal social media data to investigate the processes underlying the radicalisation of social media users. The proposed research provides a timely opportunity to refine methods, software and analytics to maximise the impact that psychology and computer science can make to countering extremism. The central research questions are how and why people develop allegiance to extremist groups through communicating online. To do this, we will develop the functionalities and capabilities of an existing software suite that can harvest and analyse large volumes of publicly-available Twitter data ('Tweets').

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The central aim of this project is to develop conceptually-grounded social media analytics software to investigate the socialisation and radicalisation of mainstream users. As a by-product of this process, and secondary aim, we will establish how supporters of radical Islam use online communications in English to affect how their target audience defines both themselves and their opponents in relation to IS.

APPLICATIONS AND BENEFITS

This project will deliver a software tool that can analyse longitudinal big data. This software will be open source and freely available. This means that it will have the potential to make a big impact in social science. It will be applicable to, and usable by, any researcher or practitioner interested in analysing social media data.

PROJECT TEAM

Our project brings together a multi-disciplinary team of academics and will be steered by end-users, mediated by Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, whose expertise will enable us to maximise the usefulness and applicability of the software tools. On the academic side, we have assembled a team with interdisciplinary strengths in computer science, psychology and social media data analysis to understand the needs of social scientists and successfully develop technology that will become fully embedded in social science and social media research.

Four key groups will benefit from this research: policy makers, researchers interested in big data and social media data analysis, government end-users with a security remit, and the general public.

POLICY MAKERS AND RESEARCHERS: We will further develop the existing social media data harvesting and analytics tool, Chorus, to achieve the objectives of the project. Significantly, this product will enable researchers to - for the first time - conduct rigorous longitudinal analysis of the semantic and grammatical content of large N user-driven data. The software will be open-source and freely available, maximising the likelihood that it will achieve impact with this audience. If we achieve wide uptake of these novel software tools by other academics, researchers and practitioners, we will have the potential to create non-academic impact in the policy and practical areas within which they themselves work. For example, health scientists could analyse changes in online users' language over time following an intervention (e.g., the Public Health England 'Stoptober' campaign) that indicates an increase in endorsement of particular behaviours or lifestyle choices. This could be leveraged to change public health policy. Interested researchers and policy makers will be invited onto the Project Advisory Board to maximise the impact that they can have on the project and vice versa.

GOVERNMENT END-USERS: According to the Defence Select Committee's (DSC) report (2015), the UK can and should be playing a greater role in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To respond to this call, this project will directly address the aims of the United in Countering Violent Extremism campaign (#UnitedCVE), which was launched recently by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to counter the incitement and recruitment of foreign fighters. To engage these stakeholders, plus government end-users from additional agencies, we will invite representatives to workshops at the beginning, middle and end of the project. At these workshops, we will encourage a dialogue with these interested parties to help guide the project, and we will demonstrate the software tools and our findings. Again, interested end-users will also be invited onto the Project Advisory Board. This dialogue will increase both the insight that the research provides and the usefulness of the software to end-users. Through doing so, this research will impact on UK efforts to counter extremism. This may in turn impact on the general public by improving the efficacy of counter-extremism operations in the UK.

POLICY MAKERS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC: This research has a broad public interest. Therefore, the Project Team will talk about Chorus and the process of online socialisation at accessible forums such as Pint of Science and Ignite, and in media releases via traditional and social media. These contributions will benefit the general public in the longer term through greater and more effective public engagement in understanding the risks associated with online socialisation and radicalisation. Improved understanding of these processes will help social media users navigate the psychological online environment more safely. Greater public understanding will also impact upon the success of policy: where the public is better informed, they can make more informed decisions about policy.