Measuring "Duty" Through Changes in Internet Traffic to Extremist Islamic Websites

On page 470 of the RAND corp's recently released Social Science for Counterterrorism, in Appendix B, Analytic Measures for Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency by Benjamin Bahney, I found the following:

Duty in this context is conceptually both a desire to exact revenge and a perceived need for a collective defense of Islam, so measures of these concepts are likely to be of interest to counterterrorism policymakers. Those who have experienced personal attacks against loved ones, those who are likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and those who have been convinced of a duty to defend Islam against threats are clearly more likely to engage in terrorism when other critical factors are present. It is difficult to conceive of operable measures to capture changes in these factors, even if specific populations are targeted. However, ideal proxy measures that would be relevant to these concepts would include the number of civilians killed or wounded during combat and changes in Internet traffic to extremist Islamic Web sites.

I'm not convinced that that is what changes in traffic to jihadi sites would be measuring, but if not Duty, then it would be some not-too-unrelated concept. Will have to give this more thought...

Posted on 15 December 2009 @ 12:36