Terrorist Web Sites

Abstract

The majority of the literature dealing with terrorism and the Internet focuses on cyberterrorism. In particular, it focuses on the vulnerability of critical information infrastructure(s) to cyber attack. Consistently alarmist in nature, many of these texts focus on the potentially disastrous consequences of a successful future cyberterrorist attack1 while skipping blithely over the proven role played by the Internet in a vast amount of current terrorist activity.2 The fact remains that despite the presence of many terrorist organizations online worldwide, no act of cyberterrorism has ever yet occurred. The point is not that cyberterrorism cannot happen or will not happen, but that it has not happened yet. Given this fact, the state of research into terrorist groups' very real online presence is curious on two counts. First, only a small number of political scientists, international relations scholars, or even those whose exclusive focus is the study of terrorism, have researched terrorist Web sites.3 As a cursory glance in any bookstore or library reveals, the majority of what passes for knowledge about the intersection of terrorism and the Internet is based on opinion and impression, not on social science theory or empirical investigation. Further, most of the research that is available is focused on specific groups and dispersed across space and time such that meaningful synthesis is next to impossible.