2019/12/08 by Mojtaba Heidarysafa, Kamran Kowsari, Heidarysafa, Mojtaba +9
Social Sciences · #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Islamic Studies and Radicalism
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1912.03804
Online propaganda is central to the recruitment strategies of extremist\ngroups and in recent years these efforts have increasingly extended to women.\nTo investigate ISIS' approach to targeting women in their online propaganda and\nuncover implications for counterterrorism, we rely on text mining and natural\nlanguage processing (NLP). Specifically, we extract articles published in Dabiq\nand Rumiyah (ISIS's online English language publications) to identify prominent\ntopics. To identify similarities or differences between these texts and those\nproduced by non-violent religious groups, we extend the analysis to articles\nfrom a Catholic forum dedicated to women. We also perform an emotional analysis\nof both of these resources to better understand the emotional components of\npropaganda. We rely on Depechemood (a lexical-base emotion analysis method) to\ndetect emotions most likely to be evoked in readers of these materials. The\nfindings indicate that the emotional appeal of ISIS and Catholic materials are\nsimilar\n