1. The following quote was gleaned from page 90 of the Rand monograph Social Science for Counterterrorism.
2. I define eJihad as a range of behaviors engaged in by jihadi activists online, a major part of which involves the production and distribution of videos.
3. Analyses of jihadi videos collected by various means, collected from multiple distribution channels, randomly sampled, and analyzed by various means, lead to a common finding that over half of all such videos expose the viewer to explicit and extreme violence, and do so in contexts that justify and encourage such violence.
4. With the above in mind, consider this:
Research suggests that mere exposure to death-related imagery can increase support for martyrdom operations. The “mortality salience” effect refers to a series of research findings that suggest that exposure to such imagery has a number of pronounced effects, including increased pride in one’s country, religion, and race. A team of researchers found that Iranian college students who were reminded of death were more likely than other students to voice support for martyrdom attacks and were more likely to state that they would take part in those attacks themselves (Pyszczynski et al., 2006).
See also:
Pyszczynski, Tom, Abdolhossein Abdollahi, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Florette Cohen, and David Weise, “Mortality Salience, Martyrdom, and Military Might: The Great Satan Versus the Axis of Evil,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 4, April 2006, pp. 525–536.
Posted on 29 May 2009 @ 17:02