'Terrorist' Use of the Internet: An Overblown Issue

Zusammenfassung

The role of the Internet in promoting transnational recruitment for armed groups, particularly "terrorist" organisations, is often taken for granted. In reality, the evidence is far from clear-cut. Research on how contemporary armed groups use the Internet suggests that they themselves view the Internet with considerable suspicion. Such accounts, however, fail to take account of an arguably more important question: whether those groups which make extensive use of the Internet have actually been more effective in causing violence than groups which have either chosen not to use it, or which were operating before it came into existence.