Terrorist organizations see the Internet as tool for ideological promotion, rallying and organizing, and for executing operations, but actual engagement on jihadist forums is relatively low, according to a report funded with a grant from the National Institute of Justice. 

"Jihadist forum discussions are generally active for a short period of time, represent the activity of a small fraction of each forum's membership (which is typically in the thousands), generate very little response from the rest of the community, and with each required turn of the virtual page, participation in the discussion drops off sharply," find the authors of a report (.pdf), dated Oct. 31, 2011.

The report's analysis focuses on the frequency, kind and quantity of topics discussed on 2,112 discussion threads, which included 18,130 entries over 2 years, from 15 different "prominent Arabic-language Jihadist forums."

Fifty-two percent of the discussions analyzed were only active for 24 hours or less and 17 percent were active for less than 48 hours. This means at any given time the vast majority of discussions were new discussions. Over half, 54 percent, of the discussion threads have four or fewer entries and on average, discussions involved six unique participants, finds the report.

Discussions had a greater likelihood of engaging forum members when they encouraged violent action, however. Thirty-seven percent of all discussions had an explicit or implicit call to Jihad and one in five called for terrorist attacks, according to the report.

"A statistically significant increase in the number of entries and unique participants was observed in discussions containing such calls to Jihad, as opposed to discussions that did not include such calls," wrote report authors.

The most common topic of discussion was religion, but not necessarily criticism of other religions; 75 percent lacked any mention of Christianity or Judaism.

The report makes policy recommendations for leveraging information on jihadist forums, saying it would be possible to "get inside the loop of Jihadist attention and interest." U.S. officials could also create interference in operational communications and simply get a better understanding of the Arab, Muslim and jihadist milieu in these online interactions.

For more:
- see the National Institute of Justice report (.pdf)

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