Understanding Digital Media and the Lifecycles of Bangladeshi Violent Extremists

Abstract

Despite a large number of studies on violent extremism and online radicalization, there exists a lack of a theoretical framework to explain the role of digital media. Moreover, the number of empirically grounded studies that would support the theories is also minimal. Against this backdrop, this project aims to move the existing literature forward theoretically and empirically and fill in the gaps. Building on John Horgan's (2014a) process model, I construct a theoretical framework explaining the role of digital media in the process of becoming violent extremists. The framework argues that participating in violent extremism is a process, and there is no single pathway to violent extremism. Digital media is one of the factors that motivate individuals in their journey to becoming violent extremists. I argue that digital media's role could be explained in three phases; recruitment, strengthening, and attack. To test the arguments, first, I develop a dataset comprising of micro-data of 370 violent extremists, including their socio-demographic traits and their pattern of using digital media. Second, I conduct interviews of the key informants of violent extremism, namely law-enforcement officers, security experts, and journalists, and analyze online jihadi materials to find the impact of digital media on violent extremism. After analyzing the profiles and contents, I find that digital media provide greater reach to the recruitment targets by providing access to the previously unreachable demographic, such as women and westernized youths. Besides greater reach, digital media help to strengthen beliefs in the jihadi ideology of the recruits by disseminating jihadi online narratives and enabling continuous interactions among the jihadists. In this phase, the recruits become actively engaged in violent extremism and prepare themselves for participation in the attack. Eventually, in the attack phase, digital media provide previously unattainable opportunities for violent extremists. By providing an in-depth analysis of five violent extremist lifecycles, this study also demonstrates the presence of online and offline factors in violent extremist lifecycles in varying degrees. The analysis finds that, in most cases, online-offline factors interact and are intertwined with each other.