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A Systematic Literature Review of Knowledge and Awareness on Terrorism

The reporting on terrorism issues especially related to Islam and Muslims has been widely researched by scholars, academics, practitioners, and other relevant parties. However, the importance to address the level of understanding and awareness on terrorism issues seems more imperative. This paper reviews how knowledge and awareness of this issue as studied by previous scholars, politicians, the media, academics, and security professionals. It focuses on the specific research techniques or methodologies that have emerged, the possible insights they offer, and the challenges and impacts they raise. With that, there is a need to do methodological-based articles on Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Guided by the PRISMA review method; a systematic review that identifies 20 related studies throughout Scopus, Web of Science, and other databases. Based on this study, five main points of SLR were discussed such as; aims of the study; study design, level of understanding; level of awareness; the findings.

Keywords: PRISMA review method , systematic literature review , terrorism understanding , terrorism awareness , Islam and Muslims

Introduction

Research on terrorism has a rich perspective and the definition of terrorism also can be varying and universal. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary ( 2018 ) defines terrorism as the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. In other regards, the burgeoning research on media and terrorism continues as the number of terrorism attacks increases worldwide especially in the advent of the new millennium ( Fahmy, 2017 ). Also, very large academic literature examines the discourses and public representations of terrorism.

For example, Borum ( 2004 ) defined terrorism as “acts of violence intentionally perpetrated on civilian non-combatants with the goal of furthering some ideological, religious or political objective.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights office (2008) defined terrorism as acts of violence that target civilians in the pursuit of political or ideological aims and includes “criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes”. In 2012 Jackson and Hall defined terrorism as an occasional subject of national and international interest before 9/11, it is now ubiquitous, and its influence can be detected in virtually every dimension of contemporary social life. Notwithstanding of wide definition of terrorism which has been stated above, Schuurman ( 2019 ) conclude that research on terrorism has retained a strong focus on al-Qaeda, jihadist terrorism more generally, and the geographic areas most strongly associated with this type of terrorist violence based on the articles published between 2007 and 2016.

In light of the above, the importance of knowledge and awareness towards terrorism issues are imperative amongst society.

Due to this, the work of Rose and Larrimore ( 2002 ) conducted a survey of 291 nurses and medical staff, and students to examine the knowledge and awareness about chemical and biological terrorism among health care providers. Based on their study, it mentioned that the knowledge scores of the respondents were low, and only less than one-fourth of the knowledge questions were answered correctly. Patel et al. ( 2020 ) echo this idea by collecting data and integrating information from various sources with the use of ontology for semantical knowledge representation.

This work is expected to positively impact the government agencies, NGOs, media, and public at large by having a better platform of information in the case of emergency and they will be able to liaise with each other. Thus, the awareness of terrorism is improved among them. Following this, the researchers try to narrow down the topic on terrorism by examining the understanding and awareness of terrorism issues through a systematic review method. This is significant mainly to discover to what extent society understands and is aware of terrorism issues as in media reports.

This article is part of a larger project on the formation of an instrument on the level of knowledge and awareness towards violence and extremist from the perspective of western media. Different methods have been used to study terrorism and media such as through content analysis, survey, and also in-depth interviews. However, a systematic review method can help the readers as well as academics to study the pattern and identify the research gap for future research on media and terrorism.

According to Higgins et al. ( 2011 ), SLR or also known as systematic review (SR) is a systematic literature review which involves three main procedures which are organized, transparent and replicable in all process, especially when to locate and synthesize all the articles. To give an example Mohamed Shaffril et al. ( 2021 ) also stated that SLR has emphasized numerous unique procedures compared to the traditional review method.

On top of that, many previous scholars such as Robinson and Lowe ( 2015 ), Greyson et al. ( 2019 ) Lockwood et al. ( 2015 ), and Mallett et al. ( 2012 ) also explained the advantages of SLR. Based on this list of literature, SLR encourages researchers to do extensive searching methods by examining the information such as research design, analytical methods, and causal chains. Most importantly, they suggested that SLR can help to increase the transparency in which all the criteria must be included to ensure the robustness of the research.

Problem Statement

Despite an abundance of research on media and terrorism, efforts to study the level of knowledge and awareness towards this issue are still lacking. Thus, this research attempts to fill the gap in understanding the level of knowledge and awareness towards terrorism as reported by the Western media.

This research will look into the research patterns and trends in terrorism through a systematic review method. With regards to fulfilling the empirical gaps, such items and checklists from articles studied could be derived to contribute new knowledge for future research and scholarly work. Additionally, this systematic review provides a reference for future studies related to the level of knowledge and awareness on terrorism issues. Other than that, this review is also crucial as there is a lack of studies on terrorism within the level of knowledge and awareness context.

This systematic review study allows information providers to understand the knowledge and awareness on terrorism easier as reported by the Western media which are also relevant for administrators, academics, policymakers, and media practitioners.

Research Questions

What is the level of knowledge and awareness towards terrorism issue, what is the pattern of study on media and terrorism, purpose of the study, research methods.

A systematic review attempts to collate all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question.

According to Liberati et al. ( 2009 ), a systematic review contains four aspects which are (a) a clearly stated set of objectives with an explicit, reproducible methodology; (b) a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that would meet the eligibility criteria; (c) an assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example through the assessment of the risk of bias; and (d) systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies. Meta-analysis a statistical method that integrates and summarises results from relevant publications selected in the systematic review ( Zurynski et al., 2015 ).

Furthermore, it also can provide more precise estimates of the effects of health care than those derived from the individual studies included within a review. From this, it can be said that systematic review and meta-analysis can minimize bias and providing reliable findings.

The analysis of PRISMA or Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses has been used to ensure the transparent and complete reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses ( Liberati et al., 2009 ). Thus, this research follows the four steps in PRISMA.

The four steps are identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion ( Gillath & Karantzas, 2019 ). As for identification, authors focus on searching articles through a database and also other additional sources. Then, it continuous with screening to exclude and remove any duplicate articles.

Eligibility is to find out the full-text article which can be assessed and lastly, the inclusion will be focusing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative synthesis. Hence, this four-phase covered and show numbers of identified records, excluded articles, and included studies.

With limited time and accessibility, the researchers have identified selected articles through electronic databases using PRISMA from 2000 until 2020 (as in Figure 1). The researchers have examined these records through abstract and full-text review only which resulted in a total of 15 articles for qualitative synthesis. The details of 15 articles were evaluated and presented in Table 3 by featuring authors, year, study design, level of understanding of terrorism, level of awareness on terrorism, and the findings.

The findings of this systematic review (limited to research published within 2000 until 2020) yield the total of 15 journal articles in English and Malay related to the level of understanding and awareness towards terrorism issues. In terms of quantity, this number is relatively small especially when we consider the timeline of articles included in this study (20 years) with two languages being included (English and Malay).

However, a broader subject on research related to terrorism may yield a greater number of studies. In this study however, we have focused on studies with such focus by arguing that to combat terrorism, we must first gain empirical data related to the level of “understanding” and “awareness” ( Jerome & Elwick, 2019 ) then only further measures or steps may be implemented to reduce the effects of terrorism at various levels.

At the same time, from this study, we admit that it is hard to find specific articles which study precisely on the level of understanding and awareness towards terrorism issues. This is a worrying sign, because we believe that, to combat terrorism, we have to identify the root of the issue and these aspects include the level of understanding and the level of awareness among the people.

Another finding from this study shows that there are three main research scopes that have been studied in these researches namely focusing on 1) the level of understanding towards terrorism issues, 2) the level of awareness towards terrorism issues and 3) the level of understanding and awareness towards terrorism issues. Out of these three scopes, 10 researches focus on the level of understanding, 9 on the level of awareness and 5 on both aspects of research.

The less dominant themes found in six different research articles are “terrorism message”, “communication about terrorism by emergency managers”, “the spread of terrorism ideology”, “public’s response against terrorist groups”, “security culture”, and “terrorism studies”. Out of these six themes, the gist of the research is on terrorism issue in which each research looked at finding the way respondents perceive terrorism and one research highlighted on the possibility of having the studies of terrorism as a formal discipline at tertiary level.

From this finding, it suggests that research that examine both aspects about terrorism (the level of understanding and awareness towards terrorism issues) may be increased in the future. A stable number of studies have been conducted on comprehending the level of understanding and the level of awareness on this issue, but the combination of both needs more effort by scholars in the future. This is inline with the suggestion made by Jerome and Elwick (2019) who argued that the level of awareness related to terrorism issues among the people can only be increased when there is an increase of level of knowledge pertaining to this issue. The lack of knowledge is then associated with the issue of a deep distrust to the media that serve as the main source of information related to terrorism ( Jackson & Hall, 2012 ; Keenan, 2018 ).

Kovacic and Logar (2016) through their study entitled Online News Coverage of Terrorism: Between Informing the Public and Spreading Fear. An analysis of 57 news reports about the case of the abduction and execution of Tomislav Salopek in 2015 has driven their study to highlight the dilemma between the public’s right to know or the security of the public. They argued that media has been used among terrorists to disseminate the ideology and activities just because to increase sales and ratings. But on the other hand, it is contradicting with The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2021) which states that journalists do their reporting on terrorism due to the two rights which are the right to information (Article 19) and the right to security (Article 3). Based on their study, it is concludable that journalists should be aware that being immensely knowledgeable is very important and providing ethical reporting is also crucial to avoid any possible adverse consequences of the reporting such as giving the terrorist the opportunity to disseminate ideas and cause public fears. This is confirmed by Williamson et al. (2020) that media should carry the responsibility to provide accurate reporting about terrorism without instigating fear or panic. Similarly, Haner et al. (2019) conducted a national survey of 1000 Americans to understand the concern about terrorism, the emotional impact of the public’s concern, and their levels of fear of a terrorist attack which one of the findings stated that a large proportion of Americans experience fear as an emotional response to the threat of a terrorist attack. This leads us to an important party when identifying crucial entities to be included in studying terrorism which will be one of the major respondents focused in the field work of this study when it is conducted.

Specifically on studies related to the level of understanding towards terrorism issues, some examples of research include Rose and Larrimore ( 2002 ) who examined the knowledge and awareness of chemical and biological terrorism among health care providers. Another study, which is conducted among university students in Malaysia by Yaakob et al. (2016) focused the aim of the research to ascertain the level of understanding about ISIS among students of higher learning institutions in Peninsular Malaysia and to ascertain the potential for their acceptance and rejection of ISIS’ struggle. The results of these studies generally demonstrate that the level of understanding towards terrorism issues are low among students ( Mohd Hefzan Azmi et al., 2018 ; Yaacob et al., 2016 ). The level is also low among specific type of workers ( Rose & Larrimore, 2002 ) with low understanding level on a specific terrorism issue such as Daesh ( Che Mohd Aziz et al., 2019 ). The low level of understanding is associated with the lack of institutional support that hesitate to fund longitudinal study on the level of understanding among people across geographical and organizational borders, and cultural differences ( Youngman, 2020 ).

Relating to this, based on the SLR analysis conducted, the level of awareness towards terrorism issues can also be concluded as low as studies found that when the level of understanding is low, this will definitely affect the level of awareness which is impossible to score a high level ( Mohd Hefzan Azmi et al., 2018 ). In terms of subject, the main aspect of “awareness” which can be included in public awareness campaigns ( Orehek & Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, 2014 ) and speeches and advocacies by politicians ( Keenan, 2018 ) includes awareness on threat. Alqahtani (2014) found that awareness of threat is one of the crucial elements that must be included to increase awareness of how dangerous terrorism can be.

Studies that focused on both aspects i.e. the level of understanding and the level of awareness demonstrate that students generally have low understanding and awareness on issues related to terrorism ( Mohd Hefzan Azmi et al., 2018 ). The same study also found that, among these students, they could not even understand the questions posted in the questionnaire. To increase the level of understanding, media play an important role ( Jerome & Elwick, 2019 ) with the assumption that, the increase of awareness among the people can only be achieved by increasing the level of knowledge ( Mohd Hefzan Azmi et al., 2018 ).

In terms of research method deployed in these studies, the analysis show that 4 studies deployed qualitative study (3 – focus group discussion; 1 – in-depth interview), 3 quantitative study with survey as the method and 2 studies deployed mixed method. 6 out of 15 studies examined do not state the method applied. From here, it can be concluded that two most popular research methods deployed in studies related to the level of understanding and awareness on issues related to terrorism are survey and focus group discussion. This seems obvious due to the strengths of these method. Survey provide a wide range of data pertaining to views of the respondents while focus group discussion allows in-depth and rich discoveries to be explored in a study ( Creswell, 2013 ; Mason, 2002 ).

From the SLR analysis conducted, there are several aspects that have been discussed including the topics being studied in previous research pertaining to the level of understanding and awareness on issues related to terrorism, the number of research and the research method deployed in these researches.

In terms of the themes identified, since this study focused to investigations related to the level of understanding and the level of awareness related to terrorism issues, three major themes were discovered mainly 1) the level of understanding about terrorism issues, 2) the level of awareness about terrorism issues and 3) the level of understanding and the level of awareness about terrorism issues have been identified besides six other lesser dominant themes. Among these three major themes, the least number of research were done on the third theme. This should be something that scholars could pay attention too, as the association between the level of understanding and the level of awareness is highly connected. It is indeed difficult to increase the level of awareness when there is no or low level of understanding. Research studying on the combination of both aspects celebrates such association, that definitely could contribute more in-depth and more meaningful data to develop practical and workable instruments and measures to combat terrorism.

In terms of the research methods deployed, the study found that the most popular ones are focus group discussion and survey. For future studies, these methods may be used as both methods yield rich data in their own ways. However, more in-depth interviews may be conducted to provide “single and in-depth data”, to add to what survey and focus group discussion have to offer. Studies should not stop deploying survey and focus group discussion methods, in-depth interview should be added especially when research on the level of understanding and awareness on terrorism issues becomes more mature, hence it will offer more in-depth and specific data that will assist to administrative and empirical decision makings in the future. Qualitative studies will also offer not only in-depth data but also cultural-sensitive discoveries hence facilitate international collaboration to counter terrorism ( Urangoo & Lee, 2019 ).

These future directions should at least spark motivation among researchers to conduct more studies related to terrorism in general and about the level of understanding and awareness more specifically. This thus then will increase the number of research in this specific issue, hence improving the limited number of studies as found in this study. Only a total of 15 studies found and analyzed in this SLR analysis, although the timeline of the study is 20 years. More studies on the combination of the level of understanding and the level of awareness must also be increased to ensure more impactful results may be obtained and shared. It is then studies on terrorism will give impact to policy making and having positive impacts to the people around the world.

Acknowledgments

This work is part of the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme for Research Acculturation of Early Career Researchers (FRGS – RACER) – funded project titled “The Formation of Instrument and Measurement towards Level of Understanding on Terrorism and Extremism from the Perspective of International Media” with grant number USIM/FRGS-RACER/FKP/50619.

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31 January 2022

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https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2022.01.02.17

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Communication, Media, Disruptive Era, Digital Era, Media Technology  

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Hassan, F., Othman, S. S., Hayati Yusoff, S., Ali, K., Omar, S. Z., & Musaddad, M. A. (2022). A Systematic Literature Review of Knowledge and Awareness on Terrorism. In J. A. Wahab, H. Mustafa, & N. Ismail (Eds.), Rethinking Communication and Media Studies in the Disruptive Era, vol 123. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 203-218). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2022.01.02.17

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. on terrorism, 3. event data sets, 4. domestic and transnational terrorism: some data plots, 5. counterterrorism, 6. findings of the articles of the special issue, 7. concluding remarks, acknowledgements, terrorism and counterterrorism: an overview.

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Todd Sandler, Terrorism and counterterrorism: an overview, Oxford Economic Papers , Volume 67, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpu039

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This introduction sets the stage for the articles collected in this special issue of Oxford Economic Papers . It begins by introducing essential concepts including domestic terrorism, transnational terrorism, defensive actions, proactive countermeasures, and guerrilla warfare. Three terrorist event databases, used by seven of the articles, are briefly introduced. These data sets are then used to display some stylized facts about domestic and transnational terrorism during the past four decades. Next, some essential strategic distinctions are drawn between defensive and proactive measures in the case of transnational terrorism when multiple countries are confronted by a common terrorist group. These strategic concerns vanish for domestic terrorism as a central government is able to internalize potential externalities. Finally, the key findings of the articles in the special issue are highlighted in two tables.

Terrorism is the premeditated use or threat to use violence by individuals or subnational groups to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate noncombatant victims ( Enders and Sandler, 2012 , p.4). The two essential ingredients of terrorism are its violence and its political or social motive. Terrorists tend to employ shockingly violent acts, such as beheadings, downing of commercial airlines, bombings in public markets, and armed attacks in public places, to intimidate an audience. Their unpredictable and horrific attacks are meant to make everyone feel at risk even though the true likelihood of falling victim to a terrorist incident is rather minuscule, roughly equivalent to that of drowning in one's bathtub ( Mueller, 2006 ). Terrorists seek to circumvent normal channels for political change by traumatizing the public with brutal acts so that governments feel compelled to either address terrorist demands or divert public funds into hardening potential targets. Terrorist campaigns are more prevalent in liberal democracies, where the government's legitimacy hinges on its ability to protect the lives and property of its citizens ( Eubank and Weinberg, 1994 ).

The four airplane hijackings on 11 September 2001 (9/11) are terrorist acts since the perpetrators were members of al-Qaida, a subnational terrorist group, bent on pressuring the USA to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia, which was al-Qaida's primary political goal at the time. These skyjackings intimidated a global audience, caused huge temporary losses to the major stock exchanges ( Chen and Siems, 2004 ), and created $80–90 billion in direct and indirect damages ( Kunreuther et al ., 2003 ). Even though stock exchanges recovered lost values in just over a month, the death of almost 3,000 people caused rich industrial countries to allocate more resources to counterterrorism, shook insurance markets, and made an indelible impression on virtually the entire world. Heinous terrorist incidents continue to capture headlines with recent newsworthy incidents involving al-Shabaab's armed attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on 21 September 2013; Chechen separatists’ suicide bombings of a train station and a trolley in Volgograd, Russia, on 29 and 30 December 2013, respectively; and Boko Haram's kidnapping of more than 200 female students in Chibok, Nigeria, on 14–15 April 2014. These and countless other incidents since 9/11 indicate that the government must allocate resources in an effective and measured manner to counterterrorism activities so that terrorists cannot circumvent legitimate political processes or cause significant economic losses. These losses may involve reduced foreign direct investment ( Enders and Sandler, 1996 ; Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2008 ), lower economic growth ( Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003 ; Eckstein and Tsiddon, 2004 ; Gaibulloev and Sandler, 2008 , 2011 ), less trade ( Nitsch and Schumacher, 2004 ), reduced tourism ( Enders et al ., 1992 ; Drakos and Kutan, 2003 ), or lost values of stock and bond indexes ( Kollias et al ., 2013 ). Economic impacts of terrorism are greatest in small terrorism-plagued countries and developing countries ( Keefer and Loayza, 2008 ; Sandler and Enders, 2008 ). Modern industrial economies can insulate themselves through judicious fiscal and monetary policy, rapid counterterrorism responses, and the transference of economic activities ( Enders and Sandler, 2012 ). The latter involves economic activities moving from terrorism-prone sectors and regions to safer areas, which advanced, diversified economies allow. Thus, economic activity may switch from the tourism sector to other sectors when the former is targeted. In Spain, economic investment switched from the Basque Country to other Spanish provinces because of Euskadi ta Askatasuna attacks ( Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003 ).

Modern-day econometric methods—time series, panel, and discrete-choice models—lend themselves to the quantification of these economic losses as shown in this special issue by Choi (2015) , Egger and Gassebner (2015) , and Younas (2015) . Additionally, game-theoretic models can display counterterrorism interactions among terrorists and governments as in the contributions in this issue by Carter (2015) and Kaplan (2015) . In fact, game theory is an excellent tool to study interactions among targeted governments, between rival terrorist groups, between a terrorist group and its sponsoring state, and among the media, the terrorist group, and the public. 1

The purpose of this article is to provide the requisite background to the studies in this special issue of Oxford Economic Papers . This task requires a fuller discussion of the notion of terrorism and its two primary subdivisions—domestic and transnational terrorism—in Section 2. The three event data sets employed in empirical studies, including seven of the eight articles in this issue, are briefly presented in Section 3. In Section 4, two of these data sets are used to display some recent trends and aspects of domestic and transnational terrorism during the last four decades. Essential concepts of counterterrorism are then presented in Section 5, where proactive measures are distinguished from defensive actions. Key findings of the four terrorism and four counterterrorism articles contained in this special issue are highlighted in two summarizing tables in Section 6. Concluding remarks follow in Section 7.

I now return to the definition of terrorism, given at the outset of this article. Any definition of terrorism involves much debate ( Hoffman, 2006 ; Enders and Sandler, 2012 ). The research community is converging to a consensus based on an operational definition on which to construct event data sets to test theoretical propositions. The article puts forward a definition that is consistent with that used by the main event data sets and relied on by researchers. Also, this definition possesses the main ingredients that are agreed on by economists, political scientists, and political economists.

The three stakeholders in this definition are the perpetrators, the victims, and the audience. By limiting terrorism to subnational agents including individuals or a ‘lone wolf’, my definition rules out state terror in which a government terrorizes its own people. The definition, however, does not rule out state-sponsored terrorism where a government clandestinely assists a terrorist group through various means, including supplying weapons, safe haven, intelligence, training, funding, or safe passage ( Mickolus, 1989 ; Bapat, 2006 ). There was a lot of state sponsorship of terrorism during the final decade of the Cold War with groups such as the Abu Nidal Organization serving as a terrorist group for hire ( Hoffman, 2006 ). 2 The most controversial element of my definition is the victim, since some definitions exclude combatants, so that attacks against an occupying army, such as US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, are not viewed as terrorism. Generally, an attack against peacekeepers, such as the 23 October 1983 suicide bombing of the US Marines barracks at Beirut International Airport, is considered an act of terrorism. The barracks’ bombing had the political objective of removing peacekeepers from Lebanon, which happened in February 1984. Attacks against US soldiers and their dependents stationed in Germany constitute terrorist incidents, because these targeted individuals were noncombatants when attacked. ‘Audience’ refers to the collective that terrorists seek to intimidate through their wanton brutality. With sufficient and sustained intimidation, the audience will apply pressures on the besieged government to concede to the terrorist group's political demands or alternatively to take decisive action to annihilate the group. 3 In the latter case, the Italian authorities dismantled the Italian Red Brigades in the 1980s.

There are some crucial distinctions to draw between terrorism and related concepts. For instance, there is the distinction between terrorism and crime. A kidnapping for ransom is a criminal act of extortion when the kidnappers are not pursuing or financing a political agenda. If a political motive is tied to the kidnapping, then it is a terrorist incident even with ransom demands being made. The hijacking of a commercial airliner by a deranged person is a crime but not terrorism. In the absence of a political motive, an armed attack by a student on fellow students or teachers is a criminal action. Next consider an insurrection, which ‘is a politically based uprising intended to overthrow the established system of governance and to bring about a redistribution of income’ ( Sandler and Hartley, 1995 , p. 307). Leaders of insurrections recruit from the peasantry and general population in the hopes of challenging the government's hold on power ( Grossman, 1991 ). Successful rebel operations can generate new recruits and may ideally cause the government to impose draconian measures on its citizens, which subsequently create more support for the insurgency. If a tipping point is attained, then the government may be sufficiently challenged to lose its power to the rebels.

In distinction to insurrections, guerrilla warfare generally involves a band of rebel forces (e.g., the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC], Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, or Shining Path in Peru) that controls a sector of the country, from which to dispatch its operatives to confront government forces. Some guerrilla wars take place in urban centers. In contrast to most terrorist groups, guerrilla groups are larger in number and organized like a military force. Some guerrilla groups engage in terrorist acts, such as the three just-mentioned groups, to raise funds to secure their operations and pursue their political aims. For example, FARC kidnaps government officials and others for ransoms. Unlike an insurrection, guerrilla groups are not bent on overthrowing the government or engaging in propaganda to gain popular support ( Hoffman, 2006 ). Shining Path and FARC apply threats and harsh measures to gain the compliance of the people in the territory that they control. Guerrilla groups rely on surprise and cover to harass numerically superior government forces. Terrorism is a tactic employed by both insurrections and guerrilla movements. As a consequence, many guerrilla groups are listed as terrorist groups despite their control of territory. Often, countries with jungle cover or mountainous terrain provide remote areas where guerrillas can conduct training and operations. In this special issue, Carter (2015) is interested in the interaction between a guerrilla group and the government, as the former chooses between terrorism and the control of territory and the latter chooses between defensive counterterrorism actions and proactive military responses to influence the group's decision.

2.1 Domestic versus transnational terrorism

Domestic terrorism is homegrown and home-directed, and represents the most common form of terrorism. For domestic acts of terrorism, the perpetrators, victims, and audience hail from the venue country, where the attack takes place. Domestic terrorist incidents include Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995 or Eric Rudolph's anti-abortionist bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, on 27 July 1996. Civil wars often involve numerous domestic terrorist attacks before and during the conflict by the adversaries ( Findley and Young, 2012 ). 4 These terrorist acts are more apt to be domestic when an intervention by a third party from outside the country is not involved. Boko Haram's kidnapping of more than 200 female students is a domestic terrorist incident, which involves victims and perpetrators from the venue country of Nigeria. Boko Haram is an Islamic jihadist terrorist group that controls territory in the northeast portion of Nigeria. Given the country's limited military capabilities, its government sought some assistance from the USA in terms of military advisors and intelligence in addressing the significant threat that Boko Haram poses. At times, Boko Haram crosses into Chad. If one or more of the schoolgirls are moved into a neighboring country, then the kidnapping becomes a transnational terrorist incident. In general, poor countries may request foreign assistance if they cannot properly confront an indigenous terrorist group that may attack at home or abroad ( Azam and Thelen, 2010 ; Fleck and Kilby, 2010 ; Bandyopadhyay et al ., 2011 , 2014 ; Young and Findley, 2011 ).

Terrorism is transnational when an incident in the venue country concerns perpetrators or victims from another country. If a terrorist attack in the UK is perpetrated by terrorists from Yemen, then the incident is one of transnational terrorism. When a terrorist attack in France harms Dutch citizens, the attack is transnational. If one or more victims or perpetrators are not citizens of the venue country, then the terrorist attack is transnational. The kidnapping in January 2002 and subsequent murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan is classified as a transnational terrorist incident. The same is true of the near-simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on 7 August 1998. Terrorist attacks against another country's embassy, even when perpetrated by citizens of the venue country, are transnational terrorist events because an embassy's grounds represent foreign soil. Similarly, terrorist attacks against international organizations’ personnel or property are considered to be transnational terrorist acts. An important transnational terrorist incident is the August 2006 plot to use liquid explosives to blow up 10 or more transatlantic flights departing the UK for the USA and Canada. A skyjacking originating in one country that is diverted to another country for political purposes is a transnational terrorist event. If a politically motivated hijacked plane has citizens from more than one country, the event is transnational terrorism even if the flight is domestic and ends in the country of origin. On 9/11, the four skyjackings are transnational terrorist acts since the victims were citizens from upward of 80 nations and the perpetrators were foreigners. The kidnapping of US journalist James Foley in Syria on 22 November 2012 and his beheading on 19 August 2014 is a transnational terrorist act. The victim was American, whereas the murderer is allegedly a British citizen from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Islamic State (IS).

Transnational terrorist incidents frequently imply transnational externalities—for example, perpetrators from one country impose uncompensated costs on the victims of another country. If a country provides safe haven to a transnational terrorist group that attacks other countries’ interests, then transnational externalities ensue. 5 The Taliban in Afghanistan had given safe haven to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida, which planned and executed the events of 9/11. When the Taliban would not surrender bin Laden to the USA following 9/11, the USA led an invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 ( Enders and Sandler, 2012 ). In this extreme case, the transnational externality resulted in a military invasion with the intent to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida. Transnational externalities also arise from counterterrorism policies of targeted countries, which result in inefficient levels of these policies ( Sandler and Lapan, 1988 ; Sandler and Siqueira, 2006 ; Bueno de Mesquita, 2007 ). Actions by one targeted country to secure its borders and ports of entry may merely transfer the attack abroad, where borders are more porous (see Section 5). Since 9/11, few transnational terrorist incidents occur on US soil but 35% to 40% of such incidents involve US people or property in other countries ( Enders and Sandler, 2006 , 2012 ).

2.2 Some historical considerations of transnational terrorism

Hoffman ( 2006 , pp.63–5) traces the modern era of transnational terrorism to the 22 July 1968 hijacking of an Israeli El Al flight en route from Rome to Athens by three armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group. This skyjacking was motivated by the intention of the PFLP terrorist to trade its hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. This event is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, through its protracted 40-day negotiations, the Israelis were forced to negotiate with the Palestinian terrorists, which the Israelis had hitherto vowed they would never do ( Hoffman, 1998 , p.68). Second, the media coverage demonstrated to terrorists worldwide that such incidents could garner worldwide attention for their cause. Not surprisingly, transnational terrorist attacks increased greatly in numbers during the years following this incident (see the figures in Section 4). Third, there was evidence of state sponsorship after the diverted plane landed in Algiers as Algerian forces secured the hostages and held some Israeli hostages until 1 September 1968 when a deal was concluded ( Mickolus, 1980 , pp.93–4). Fourth, Israel eventually traded 16 Arab prisoners from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War for the remaining Israeli hostages. This trade showed terrorists that hostage taking could yield significant concessions.

Transnational terrorist groups were primarily nationalists/separatists or leftists (socialists) during the late 1960s until the late 1980s ( Rapoport, 2004 ). Even the Palestinian terrorists were secular until the end of the 1980s with the rise of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other groups. After the mid-1990s, the religious fundamentalists came to dominate and increased the carnage ( Enders and Sandler, 2000 ; Gaibulloev and Sandler, 2014 ). The phenomenon of religious-based transnational terrorism is not novel and can be traced back to the Sicarii or Zealots, a Jewish sect that conducted a terror campaign against the Romans and their Jewish collaborators in Judea from CE 48 to 73 ( Rapoport, 1984 ; Bloom, 2005 ). Sicarii terrorists engaged in daytime assassinations in public places that typically resulted in the death of the assassin. As such, their dagger attacks were an early form of suicide terrorism, since the perpetrator had little chance of escape. 6 From 1090 to 1256, the Islamic Assassins opposed Sunni rule in Persia and Syria, with the intent to set up their own community and state of believers in the region ( Bloom, 2005 ). Although the Assassins’ terrorist campaign was on a much smaller scale, their goal was similar to that of ISIS. Like the Sicarii, the Assassins relied on politically motivated assassinations, performed with a dagger. Perpetrators usually sacrificed their own lives by making no efforts to escape after the deed.

In the beginning of the 1980s, the first terrorist event data set—International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE)—was made available to researchers. ITERATE only includes transnational terrorist attacks. Coverage starts in 1968, the beginning of the modern era of transnational terrorism, and runs until the end of 2012, with annual updates in August ( Mickolus et al ., 2013 ). ITERATE codes many variables—for example, incident date, country start location, country end location, attack type, target entity, terrorist group, perpetrators’ nationalities, number of deaths, number of injuries, victims’ nationalities, logistical outcome, US victims, state sponsorship, and scene of attack—in its Common File of over 40 variables. In addition, there is a Fate File indicating the fate of the terrorists—for example, the number of terrorists captured, the number of terrorists sentenced, and their length of incarceration. There is also a Hostage File, which has invaluable observations used by researchers to analyze logistical and negotiation success of hostage taking ( Santifort and Sandler, 2013 ). If an attack is completed as planned, then it is a logistical success. For hostage missions, securing one or more hostages is deemed a logistical success. The Hostage File of ITERATE is currently updated through 2010. Finally, there is a Skyjacking file with additional observations, and variables on skyjacking missions such as the duration of the incidents, airline involved, and negotiation strategies used. ITERATE, like the other event data sets, relies on the news media—print, broadcast, and digital—for the observations of its variables.

An initial focus of empirical studies was on transnational terrorism because ITERATE was the most extensive data set available throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Its lengthy series of daily data were ideal for time-series studies, which dominated the research landscape except for a few survival studies, the first being Atkinson et al .'s (1987) study of the duration of hostage-taking incidents. Today, panel studies are prevalent including those in this special issue— Berrebi and Ostwald (2015) , Choi (2015) , Egger and Gassebner (2015) , Gries et al . (2015) , and Younas (2015) .

Another competing event data set, modeled after ITERATE, is the RAND (2012) data set, which currently codes incidents for 1968–2009 and is not being updated. Gaibulloev (2015) uses the RAND event data in conjunction with Jones and Libicki's (2008) classification of terrorist groups’ ideologies in his study of groups’ location decisions. For 1968–97, RAND event data only include transnational terrorist attacks; after 1998, RAND data distinguish between transnational and domestic terrorist attacks in a manner consistent with my early definitions. Compared to ITERATE, RAND data code fewer variables and, for transnational terrorist incidents, have more limited coverage than ITERATE as demonstrated by Enders (2007) .

The third event data set, germane to this special issue, is that of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which records both domestic and transnational terrorist incidents ( La Free and Dugan, 2007 ; National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism, 2013 ). Although GTD recorded both kinds of incidents, until 2013 it did not distinguish between the two kinds of incidents. Enders et al . (2011) devised a five-step procedure for distinguishing between domestic and transnational terrorist incidents in GTD for 1970–2007 and made their breakdown available to researchers. This division is now applied to 2008–2012 (see Enders et al ., 2014 ). A breakdown of terrorism into its two components is essential because the two types of terrorism may affect economic variables and counterterrorism differently—for example, economic growth or foreign direct investment is more influenced by transnational terrorism ( Gaibulloev and Sandler, 2008 ). Moreover, the influence of other variables on domestic and transnational terrorism may differ ( Sandler, 2014 ; Choi, 2015 ). The Enders et al . (2011) procedure does a much better job in distinguishing between the two types of events than recent GTD efforts, based on the authors’ method without attribution. GTD has tens of thousands of unclassified incidents compared to Enders et al . (2011) .

There are some things to note about GTD. First, it has changed its coding conventions a few times, most recently for the 2012 data. Coding was also changed after the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (2013) , based at the University of Maryland, took charge of the data around 2005. As shown by Enders et al . (2011) , there are periods of undercounting and overcounting of incidents, which can be addressed by these authors’ calibration methods. Second, GTD data for 1993 are very incomplete because in an office move by Pinkerton, which originated the database, the box containing 1993 fell off of the truck! Third, perpetrators’ nationalities are not identified. Fourth, GTD does not contain any hostage negotiation variables, making the study of hostage-taking incidents impossible with this database. Fifth, GTD coverage of some kinds of domestic incidents, such as kidnappings, is virtually nonexistent prior to the late 1990s ( Enders et al ., 2011 ).

Key aspects of the articles for the special issue

Notes: *denotes that Enders et al . (2011) breakdown of GTD into domestic and transnational terrorist incidents was used. ITERATE = International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events; GTD = Global Terrorism Database.

A variety of empirical techniques are applied by the six empirical articles. In his cross-sectional study of the location choice of terrorist groups, Gaibulloev (2015) relies on a conditional logit estimator. To account for the count nature of the dependent terrorism variable, Choi (2015) and Gries et al . (2015) apply a negative binomial panel estimator. Endogeneity between the dependent variable and one or more independent variables is addressed in various ways: the Berrebi and Ostwald (2015) article employs instrumental variables (IV), consisting of lagged domestic terrorist attacks in neighboring countries, whereas the Younas (2015) article uses system generalized method of moments (SGMM) to augment his feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) estimates. The Gries et al . (2015) article addresses endogeneity with lagged values of the independent variables and also SGMM estimates. The Choi (2015) article primarily uses lagged independent variables to partly handle the endogeneity concern.

ITERATE transnational terrorist incidents and total casualties per year, 1968–2012

GTD terrorist incidents per year, 1970–2012

ITERATE attacks against US interests per year, 1968–2012

Annual number of casualties per attack

This special issue contains articles on terrorism and counterterrorism. Given my discussion of terrorism and its concepts, it is now instructive to introduce some basic concepts and concerns that are associated with the practice of counterterrorism.

Quite simply, counterterrorism corresponds to actions to ameliorate the threat and consequences of terrorism. These actions can be taken by governments, military alliances, international organizations (e.g., INTERPOL), private corporations, or private citizens. Counterterrorism comes in two basic varieties: defensive and proactive measures.

Defensive countermeasures protect potential targets by making attacks more costly for terrorists or reducing their likelihood of success. When, however, successful terrorist attacks ensue, defensive actions also serve to limit the resulting losses to the target. Defensive measures have generally been reactive, instituted after some successful or innovative terrorist attacks. In the USA, airline passengers are now required to remove their shoes when being screened, following the innovative, but fortunately unsuccessful, attempt by Richard Reid to bring down American Airlines flight 63 en route from Paris to Miami on 22 December 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes. Before the installation of metal detectors to screen passengers at US airports on 5 January 1973, there were on average over 25 skyjackings each year in the USA ( Enders et al ., 1990 ). After their installation, attempted US skyjackings dropped to fewer than four a year. The success of these metal detectors in US airports led to their installation worldwide over the next six months. Following the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988 and the downing of UTA flight 772 over Niger on 19 September 1989, bomb-detecting devices were used to screen checked luggage. Defensive or protective counterterror actions may involve more than technological barriers. Other instances of defensive measures include target hardening, such as defensive perimeters around government buildings or embassies, or guards at key points of a country's infrastructure. Defensive measures can also take the form of issuing terrorism alerts, enacting stiffer penalties for terrorism offenses, enhancing first-responder capabilities, and stockpiling antibiotics and antidotes for biological and chemical terrorist attacks. This list of defensive actions is by no means exhaustive.

By contrast, proactive measures are offensive as a targeted government directly confronts the terrorist group or its supporters. Proactive measures may destroy terrorists’ resources (e.g., training camps), curb their finances, eliminate their safe havens, or kill and capture their members. In recent years, the Obama administration has relied on drone attacks to assassinate terrorist leaders and operatives. Proactive operations may assume myriad other forms, including a retaliatory raid against a state sponsor that provides resources, training, sanctuary, logistical support, or intelligence to a terrorist group. On 15 April 1986, the USA launched a retaliatory bombing raid on targets in Libya for its alleged support in the terrorist bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin on 4 April 1986, where 3 died and 231 were wounded, including 62 Americans ( Mickolus et al ., 1989 , vol. 2, pp.365–7). Another proactive measure takes the form of a preemptive attack against a terrorist group or a harboring country, such as the US-led invasion of Afghanistan four weeks after 9/11. A preemptive strike differs from a retaliatory raid because the former is more sustained and meant to severely compromise the capabilities of the terrorists to conduct future missions. Such strikes or raids concern transnational terrorism where a targeted country confronts the foreign threat. Other proactive measures include infiltrating terrorist groups, engaging in military action, conducting propaganda campaigns against the terrorists, and gathering intelligence to foil terror plots ( Kaplan, 2015 ). ‘Military action’ generally refers to operations by the host government against a resident terrorist group as in Carter (2015) . Actions that improve the economy, which in turn reduces grievances, can also be proactive ( Choi, 2015 ). Younas (2015) demonstrates empirically that increased globalization of a country's economy may also be proactive by limiting harmful and therefore grievance-causing effects of terrorism on economic growth. In this special issue, the four counterterrorism articles primary address aspects of proactive measures. Only Carter (2015) considers both defensive and proactive counterterrorism responses.

The game-theoretic literature on counterterrorism draws some fascinating strategic contrasts between defensive and proactive countermeasures. Suppose that two or more countries are confronted by the same Islamic jihadist terrorist group—for example, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In this transnational terrorism scenario, each at-risk country is inclined to work at cross-purposes by engaging in a defensive race in the hopes of transferring the terrorist attacks to other targeted countries ( Sandler and Lapan, 1988 ; Arce and Sandler, 2005 ). In the process, the countries engage in too much defense since the negative transference externality is not internalized. The only check on this adverse ‘defense race’ stems from the countries having large interests abroad, which may be hit when attacks are transferred abroad—recall Fig. 3 and attacks against US interests ( Bandyopadhyay and Sandler, 2011 ; Bandyopadhyay et al ., 2011 ).

Next consider proactive measures in these multicountry scenarios. Any country's actions to confront the common terrorist threat confer purely public (nonrival and nonexcludable) benefits to all potential target countries. As a result, there is too little proactive response as each country tries to free ride on the actions of other countries. Thus, defensive measures are strategic complements as one country's actions encourage those of other countries (i.e., reaction paths are upward-sloping), whereas proactive measures are strategic substitutes as one country's actions inhibit those of other countries (i.e., reaction paths are downward-sloping) ( Eaton, 2004 ; Sandler and Siqueira, 2006 ). Moreover, leadership can be shown to curb the defensive race, whereas leadership exacerbates the free-riding underprovision of offensive measures ( Sandler and Siqueira, 2006 ). Thus, there is no simple fix for these concerns among sovereign targeted nations.

For domestic terrorism, countries possess the proper incentives to choose defensive and proactive measures judiciously, because all associated costs and benefits are internalized ( Enders and Sandler, 2012 ). Thus, Kaplan's (2015) finding that the USA staffs about the right number of intelligence analysts to intercept terror plots is consistent with past game-theoretic findings regarding domestic counterterrorism optimality. Carter's (2015) article is also geared to domestic terrorism, whereas Choi (2015) and Younas (2015) may involve economic-based countermeasures for either type of terrorism.

Key findings of terrorism studies

Key findings of counterterrorism studies

This special issue contains many noteworthy advances in the study of terrorism. Gaibulloev (2015) is the first article to address terrorist groups’ base location choice; currently, the study of terrorist group survival is an active area of research. Berrebi and Ostwald (2015) is the initial study to examine the impact of terrorism on fertility. Younas (2015) and Choi (2015) refine the relationship between terrorism and growth; Egger and Gassebner (2015) show that terrorism has less of an effect on trade than conventionally believed. Kaplan (2015) investigates the social efficiency of intelligence staffing in intercepting terror plots. Carter's (2015) analysis is novel because the terrorist group must decide between terrorist attacks and holding territory in reaction to the government's countermeasures. The interface between terrorism and other forms of political violence is seldom studied. Finally, the Gries et al . (2015) study extends knowledge of the determinants of anti-American terrorist attacks, which comprise 35–40% of all transnational terrorism.

Terrorism remains an active research area in economics, political economy, and political science. Given the microeconomic and macroeconomic consequences of terrorism, its study is a fitting topic for a general economics journal such as Oxford Economic Papers . Following 9/11, industrial countries engaged in a huge reallocation of resources toward counterterrorism, whose efficacy can be best studied and understood with the theoretical and empirical tools drawn from economics.

The rise of ISIS and the considerable threat that its Western fighters pose for their home countries means that terrorism will remain a policy concern. AQAP's war on the USA and its allies is yet another terrorist threat. Just as Africa appears to be achieving sustained economic growth in select countries, significant terrorist challenges arise from Boko Haram and al-Shabaab in Nigeria and Kenya, respectively. Failed states—for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—supply safe havens for terrorist groups that threaten Western interests. It is my hope that this special issue on terrorism and counterterrorism will stimulate further research in these two topics.

The present collection arises from a set of papers presented at the sixth conference on Terrorism and Counterterrorism Policy at the University of Texas, Dallas. Held between 21 May and 24 May 2014, this conference invited many leading contributors to the study of terrorism and counterterrorism. Past conferences resulted in special issues published in Economics &Politics (November 2009), Journal of Conflict Resolution (April 2010), Journal of Peace Research (May 2011), Public Choice (December 2011), and Southern Economic Journal (April 2013). While assuming full responsibility for any remaining shortcomings, this article has profited from comments from Anindya Banerjee, who also advised me on the special issue. Khusrav Gaibulloev read and commented on an earlier version. Finally, I thank all of this special issue's reviewers, most of whom are major contributors to the study of terrorism. These reviewers provided rigorous reviews in a timely fashion. All articles went through a careful and demanding prescreening process, followed by two rounds of reviews by two to three anonymous referees. I appreciate the understanding of those authors whose papers did not make it into the special issue.

On the game-theoretic literature on terrorism, see Bandyopadhyay and Sandler (2011) , Bandyopadhyay et al . ( 2011 , 2014 ), Sandler and Arce (2003) , Bueno de Mesquita (2005) , and Sandler and Siqueira (2009) .

The Abu Nidal Organization was headed by Sabri Khali al-Banna. Its notorious attacks included the simultaneous armed attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports on 27 December 1985, the armed attack on the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul on 6 September 1986, and the attempted hijacking of Pan Am flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, on 5 September 1986 ( Enders and Sandler, 2012 ). This group is credited with the first simultaneous terrorist attacks.

On alternative ways that terrorist groups end, see Carter (2012) , Gailbulloev and Sandler (2014) , and Phillips (2014a) .

On the relationship between civil wars and terrorism, see Sambanis (2008) .

How terrorist groups choose their home base is discussed in this special issue by Gaibulloev (2015) . On the definition of terrorist groups, see Phillips (2014b) .

In this special issue, Choi (2015) investigates suicide terrorism, which may be domestic or transnational in nature. Suicide terrorist attacks grew in numbers after 1988 ( Santifort-Jordan and Sandler, 2014 ).

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Does Counter-Terrorism Work? by Richard English review – a thoughtful and authoritative analysis

The Belfast academic offers vitally important lessons about government strategies, from Northern Ireland to the Middle East, warning that few campaigns are a complete success

I n January 2002, during his State of the Union address, President George W Bush said that in “four short months” the US had “rallied a great coalition, captured, arrested and rid the world of thousands of terrorists … and terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrifice their lives are running for their own”.

The term “war on terror” had been coined a few days after al-Qaida’s attacks of 9/11 to describe the most extensive and ambitious counter-terrorism operation the world had seen. As Bush spoke, it all seemed to be going rather well.

Two decades later, with more than 300,000 people killed in Iraq, according to some estimates, and perhaps 240,000 deaths in Afghanistan, the violence of the “war on terror” can be seen to have created further chaos and carnage. Even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan, the numbers killed in terrorist attacks around the world rose from 109 a month in the years before 9/11, according to one study , to 158 a month during the six years that followed. Meanwhile, some of those whom Bush said were running for their lives are now in power in Kabul.

In Northern Ireland , on the other hand, the conflict came largely to an end – after 30 years – once British governments began to use the military and police to contain, rather than attempt to brutally extirpate, anti-state violence. Security forces patiently developed their intelligence-gathering capacities, while government ministers acknowledged the political causes of terrorism and, eventually, formed partnerships with those whom they had been fighting.

Richard English, the author of Does Counter-Terrorism Work? , is a professor of political history at Queen’s University Belfast, and has dedicated decades to the analysis of terrorism and to governments’ efforts to overcome it. Given that the choices made in counter-terrorism policy impact directly upon each of us every day, it is a vitally important area of study.

His previous work includes a 2016 volume, Does Terrorism Work? , and a highly regarded history of the IRA . Here, he offers a thoughtful and authoritative dissection of the counter-terrorism efforts of the “war on terror”, Northern Ireland’s Troubles and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and the lessons that each can offer.

English believes that post-9/11 counter-terrorism was far too short-termist, that the histories of Afghanistan and Iraq were “substantially ignored in a disgraceful fashion” and that the US became overly impressed with its own early military successes in both countries.

In Iraq, the claim that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was a necessary part of a global counter-terrorist campaign was, of course, founded on the false claim that Saddam was supporting al-Qaida and the mistaken belief that he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, English writes, the assumption that the Middle East could be recast “through naive invasion” took no account of the region’s past, its complex allegiances, or the possibility of something simply going wrong.

He cautions that very few counter-terrorism campaigns will ever achieve complete strategic success. Unconvinced by those who claim bullishly that the Provisional IRA was “defeated”, he argues persuasively that the republican movement’s sustainable campaign of violence was suspended only because its pragmatic leaders decided that they might more likely achieve their objective – a united Ireland – by peaceful means. Equally, he is sceptical of those among his fellow academics who argue that counter-terrorism operations will inevitably promote terrorism.

However, he writes, there are times when “those who criticise counter-terrorists for worsening their state’s strategic position regarding terrorism, and those who celebrate tactical-operational successes against terrorist adversaries, might shout past each other while yet both being right”.

English judges that if any counter-terrorism campaign is to achieve even partial strategic victory, it must be conducted in a patient, well-resourced manner, with clear objectives. Given that terrorists often seek to provoke outrage and overreaction, the public should be encouraged to be realistic about the limits to what can be accomplished.

He also concludes that to avoid failure, counter-terrorist efforts must be integrated into broader political initiatives: “We should not mistake the terrorist symptom for the more profound issues that are at stake.”

Although this book was written before the Hamas attacks of 7 October and the war in Gaza, English was already convinced that Israeli counter-terrorism tactics, no matter how carefully conceived or brilliantly executed, will not resolve the conflict unless there is a strategic engagement with Palestinian grievances and desire for statehood.

Finally, he cautions that his three case studies present serious warnings about the self-harm that can be inflicted by state actions judged to lack morality. All three have involved the abuse of prisoners; that an overreliance on aggressive military methods can shatter public support; that technical surveillance should be lawful and proportionate; and, as a senior British police officer warned in a report published this month , that there are serious questions to be asked about the morality and legality of allowing informants within terrorist organisations to commit serious crimes.

“A successful counter-terrorism will be a just counter-terrorism,” English writes: legally bound, accountable and proportionate. To stray from this, he says, risks delegitimising the objectives of the state. Or as a mural in Northern Ireland used to say: “When those who make the law, break the law, in the name of the law, there is no law.”

Ian Cobain is the author of Anatomy of a Killing: Life and Death on a Divided Island (Granta)

Does Counter-Terrorism Work? by Richard English is published by Oxford University Press (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

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An Explorative Study into the Importance of Defining and Classifying Cyber Terrorism in the United Kingdom

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• Published: 24 November 2021
• Volume 3 , article number  84 , ( 2022 )

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• Victoria Jangada Correia   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0305-3381 1  

Terrorism, crime, and war are all familiar notions; however, the way in which these have been altered through cyberspace is not yet fully, nor unanimously, understood through definitions, theories, and approaches. Although the threat level of terrorism in the UK has lowered to moderate, the threat posed by cyber terrorism has nonetheless heightened throughout the COVID pandemic due to the greater necessity and presence of technology in our lives. This research aimed to highlight the necessity for a unanimous cyber terrorism definition and framework and further aimed to determine what perceptions are held by the general public regarding cyber terrorism through a mixed methods approach. The literature review confirms that there is an absence of a unanimously agreed upon definition of cyber terrorism, and furthermore that the existing academic definitions are not compatible with UK legislation. In addition, the literature review highlights an absence of a cyber terrorism framework that classifies what kind of terrorist activity is cyber enabled or cyber dependent. Quantitative data from the online survey find a couple of significant effects implying the necessity for greater diversity amongst stakeholders which could potentially enhance the detection and prevention of terrorism in the UK. The qualitative data find that although there is some agreement amongst the sample population in views held towards cyber terrorism, some misconceptions are nonetheless present which could have implications on the general public’s ability to identify and report cyber terrorist activity. Overall, the findings from the literature review and the primary data collection aid in developing a cyber terrorism definition that is compatible with UK legislative definitions, and further aids in developing a terrorist activity framework that succinctly highlights the inextricable links between traditional, cyber enabled, and cyber-dependent terrorism.

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Introduction

Overview of research.

For almost up to 2 decades, the search for defining cyber terrorism has been described as the ‘Holy Grail’ for scholars and policy makers [ 1 ]. This has been escalated during the recent COVID pandemic where life has made a remarkable shift towards online activity, placing individuals at a much higher risk of being vulnerable to cyber terrorist activities [ 2 ]. Although there has been considerable research focusing on how cyber capabilities facilitate terrorism [ 3 , 4 , 5 ], there is nonetheless significant disagreement surrounding what definitions and approaches should be used unanimously to facilitate in preventing, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting cyber terrorist threats by key stakeholders in the United Kingdom (UK) such as the police, prosecution services and policy makers and international stakeholders too.

This disagreement could be due to the notion that cyber terrorism as a term, houses a wide range of illicit behaviours including hacking and phishing, to sharing online propaganda, radicalising and recruiting individuals. Therefore, attempting to define everything under the term ‘cyber terrorism’ can become challenging due to legal contexts, objectives of the illicit behaviour, and intent [ 6 ]. The lack of a unanimous definition has further delayed a framework for cyber terrorism being developed. McGuire and Dowling [ 7 ] coined the cyber-dependant and cyber-enabled cybercrime classification; however, cyber terrorism was outside the scope at the time, and this has not been further reviewed to date.

As at financial year end on March 2020, 261 arrests of terrorism-related activity were recorded [ 8 ]. However, as at financial year end on March 2021, there was a 37% reduction in terrorism-related arrests [ 9 ]. Not only are these statistics potentially reflective of the three national lockdowns and restrictions put in place for the COVID pandemic but are also potentially indicative of terrorist activity transitioning further into online platforms and not being regulated effectively. It was found that in the middle of the pandemic, terrorist groups had been altering their methods of sharing their beliefs through a plethora of online platforms, from disseminating propaganda to spreading misinformation and conspiracies to attain further support [ 2 ]. These findings highlight a socio-technical perspective in which the inextricable links between terrorist technological use and its impacts on society are evident. This perspective highlights the need for a more collaborative approach from stakeholders to create greater security for society from terrorism.

Interestingly, the aforementioned issues are also prevalent and long-standing in the taxonomy of cybercrime and the crimes which are included under this term [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. This alludes to widespread conflict in the foundational understanding of cybercrime as a whole which inevitably affects the approach to counter cyber terrorism. Therefore, the rationale for this research highlights the importance of law enforcement, policy makers and prosecuting services having a clear definition and framework for cyber terrorism and its links to traditional terrorism, allowing them to combat the threat collaboratively. However, it is perhaps important to note that recent research found that the use of nonspecific interventions to deter terrorist activity could in fact lead to an increase in terrorist attacks [ 13 ]. In light of this, more specific interventions and a clearer understanding of underlying criminal behaviours are necessary to effectively combat the threat of terrorism, further highlighting the need for a more unanimous and concise definition and approach from relevant stakeholders in countering cyber terrorism.

Research Aims and Objectives

This research primarily aims to establish a concise definition of cyber terrorism and a suitable framework that clearly elaborates on terrorist and cyber terrorist activity to be considered by UK stakeholders. In order to achieve this primary aim, this research’s research will investigate and critically analyse the etymology of the words so to better understand the term ‘cyber terrorism’. Furthermore, current definitions of terrorism and cyber terrorism will be reviewed and analysed to determine the strengths and weakness of viewing cyber terrorism in certain ways. Additionally, Space Transition Theory [ 14 ] and Routine Activity Theory [ 15 ] will be analysed to inform a discussion on cyber terrorist behaviours and processes. Lastly, the Smith et al. terrorist group activity process [ 16 ] will be analysed alongside the McGuire and Dowling [ 7 ] dual binary classification, to support the development of a proposed framework.

This research then aims to determine what the public’s perceptions are towards cyber terrorism as this could be representative of bigger issues regarding misconceptions on the topic. To conduct a reasonable investigation, this research will collect quantitative and qualitative primary data by means of an online survey. The data will first be statistically analysed to determine any significance between participant demographics and opinions. The data will then be thematically analysed to determine any strong themes which relate to participant opinions and identify common views held by the sample population in context of the findings from the literature review.

Article Layout

The structure which this research will follow includes a literature review where relevant literature, definitions, and frameworks will be evaluated to present a clear outline on what the current state of defining cyber terrorism is. This will be followed by a methodology chapter which will discuss and analyse the mixed methods approach adopted for this research’s primary data collection. Subsequently, the quantitative and qualitative results will be interpreted in the context of the findings from the literature review, with analysis of the implications and limitations of the data. Within the results and findings chapter, a new cyber terrorism definition and framework will be proposed and analysed. Finally, the research will offer conclusions and recommendations highlighting how the study could be improved and further researched.

Literature Review

Modern day understanding of terrorism.

Defining terrorism is a subject matter undergoing much discourse [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. This struggle in defining terrorism could be attributed to the difficulty in reflecting ideological, philosophical, political and religious normative differences under a single term. As a result of this, further confusion can become apparent in justifying the legality or illegality of suspected terrorist activity. Terrorism has been depicted as a social construct as the meaning of it is shaped by the views held by the person categorising what terrorism means to them [ 20 , 21 ].

According to Hewer and Taylor, the term terrorism is merely a marker used by governments to legitimise or delegitimise politically motivated violence occurring in their country [ 22 ]. A good example of this is the paradoxical nature between the Middle East and the West in their characterisation of terrorism. In the Middle East there is an amalgamation between religious identity and politics which influences societal and cultural concepts directly [ 23 , 24 ], whereas in the west there is a strong distinction between religion and politics resulting in a democratic society which enables an array of societal and cultural ideals to cohabit [ 22 , 25 ]. The beliefs and ideologies held by the West and the Middle East see one another as a threat to their respective core norms and values which is potentially where the notion of terrorism emerges [ 26 , 27 ]. Overall, this information emphasises the belief that different countries may have different meanings of what qualifies as a terrorist act or not depending on their political and religious alignment. In light of this, it is important to acknowledge that the prosecution of a terrorist who is not based in the UK may be troublesome due to these differing aspects, especially with cyber terrorism where threats or acts of violence and disruption can be communicated or committed through cyber capabilities off British soil.

The Terrorism Act 2006 [ 28 ] and The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 [ 29 ] are amongst some of the acts which detail illicit behaviours within terrorist activity. More specifically, The Terrorism Act 2006 defines terrorism as an act, or threat of act of violence against the public and/or property, to intimidate the public and/or property, or to advance political or religious ideologies. This definition has been criticised due to its implications on principles of legality and its lack of clarity in defining what actions are ascribed as ‘terrorist’ which may mislead public and political perceptions regarding terrorism [ 18 , 21 ]. This vagueness could be attributed to confusing wording within legislation, which could further cause individuals engaging in terrorist activity to not be aware of the illegality behind their behaviour. Regardless of these downfalls, it is important to consider the UK’s legislative definition of terrorism in this literature review as it is pertinent that any future cyber terrorism definition be compatible with already existing legislation.

Media coverage has also contributed massively to the way in which terrorism is defined and understood and have blurred the lines between victims and perpetrators of terrorist acts [ 30 ]. The media’s use of terms such as ‘freedom fighting’, ‘insurgency’ and ‘extremism’ has caused the foundational meaning of terrorism to be replaced and misunderstood [ 18 ]. As a result, the original understanding of the term terrorism has been modified to suit the many political and religious terrorist organisations operating in modern society. This could potentially result in news media outlets shaping and promoting misconceptions amongst public opinion.

This can be better understood through Gatekeeping Theory which explores the way in which information is selected and disseminated to a group of people by news media outlets [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Shoemaker and Vos [ 32 ] further developed the theory, specifically investigating the way in which information of an event is passed through a series of ‘gatekeepers’ who determine what information will be disseminated, how and to whom. This theory challenges one to consider how the gatekeeping process may potentially wittingly or unwittingly distort the general public’s understanding of terrorism and terrorist activity according to the differing political, religious, or societal alignments held by news media outlets. In light of these findings, it is clear that a unanimous understanding of terrorism should be shared across the various stakeholders to improve the accuracy of the information being shared to the public.

Understanding the ‘Cyber’ Prefix

The term ‘cyber’ as we know it today originates back to kebernetes which was an ancient Greek phrase which translates to ‘the art of steering’ [ 34 ]. It was not until mathematician Norbert Wiener used the word cybernetics in the 1940s that the term came to be known as a study of the systems within living beings and artificial machines [ 35 ]. This term was further influenced by pop culture in the 1980s during the cyberpunk movement which was inspired by William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer [ 36 ], which further associated the ‘cyber’ term with dystopian and futuristic concepts. At a similar time to this, there had also been a shifting approach and understanding within the US military with regard to information warfare and the changing nature of the modern battlefield [ 37 ].

Flutter argues that the cyber prefix is nothing but a catchall phrase which has resulted in a term that has been overly ill-defined due to the various range of factors which it tries to explain [ 38 ]. In his article, Flutter suggests that returning the terms ‘Information Warfare’, ‘Information Operations’ and ‘Computer Network Operations’ instead of the cyber prefix would be more beneficial as this would clearly classify crimes which are dependent to technology. Conversely to this view, it has been argued that a definition of cyberspace should not be solely categorised under the technological components as “cyberspace allows the exercise of power” [ 39 ]. Although Computer Network Operations as a term has mostly been used in warfare, there have yet been implications to push this into the broader scope of cybercrimes.

It could be useful to apply the above terms to terrorism rather than the cyber prefix as this could more clearly define terrorist activity which is fully dependent on technological capabilities such as denial of service attacks. This approach to focus on the computer and information operations has been adopted by a few academics in their definitions of cyber terrorism [ 40 , 41 ]. However, such an approach is arguably limited as it excludes other types of terrorist activities which are being enabled by other aspects of technology such as the dissemination of terrorist propaganda and recruitment. Although separate terms could be designed to distinguish between these differing approaches to terrorist activity, the cyber prefix has become a synonymous catch all phrase distinguishing between traditional crimes and more modern crimes being committed through technological capabilities. In light of this, a term such as ‘computer network operations’ or ‘information warfare’ may not be suitable to further explore and define cyber terrorism as these terms overlook other types of terrorist activity. In turn, this would reject the inextricable links between technology, terrorism, and their impacts on communities, not just computer networks. Therefore, this literature review proposes that the use of the cyber prefix is pertinent for a clear and synonymous categorisation between traditional terrorism and cyber terrorism.

Current Definitional Interpretations of Cyber Terrorism

Cyber terrorism definitions are mostly based upon traditional terrorism definitions such as the aforementioned. It has been suggested that attacks can qualify as cyber terrorism if there is intent to impede on the political, social, or economic functioning of a group, organisation or country, or to provoke/perpetrate acts of physical violence [ 42 ]. Holt further supports this definition by suggesting that the term cyber terrorism should encapsulate the behaviour leading to the act, without necessarily resulting in physical disruption or damage [ 43 ]. Both these definitions put emphasis on the intent and motivations behind cyber terrorist activity instead of narrowly focusing on the physical impacts.

Conversely, other academics have taken a different stance on the matter and have argued that to qualify an attack under cyber terrorism, physical damage and/or disruption against a computer or network must occur [ 40 , 41 ]. Despite efforts made by academics to define cyber terrorism, some have further argued that the cyber prefix to terrorism only elaborates on the method employed in committing terrorism and therefore ‘cyber terrorism’ does not require its own category [ 44 ]. As technology continues to evolve and becomes more accessible, viewing cyber terrorism as proposed by Gordon and Ford [ 44 ] and Denning [ 41 ], could pose a greater risk to public safety, as well as impact law enforcement’s understanding and approaches in preventing, detecting, and investigating cyber terrorist activity.

These cyber terrorism definitions offer differing insights into what may and may not qualify as cyber terrorism, but it is important to acknowledge the dates when these definitions were conceived. As technology has significantly evolved since the conception of these definitions, it has become necessary to agree upon an up-to-date cyber terrorism definition that incorporates all aspects of modern technology. A more recent study was conducted identifying the key characteristics present in an array of cyber terrorism definitions to establish a new definition based off of these components and the study concluded that [ 45 ]:

“Cyber terrorism is the premeditated attack or threat thereof by non-state actors with the intent to use cyberspace to cause real world consequences in order to influence fear or coerce civilian, government, or non-government targets in pursuit of social or ideological objectives. Real-world consequences include physical, psychological, political, economic, ecological, or otherwise that occur outside of cyber space.”

This definition emphasises the actor, motivation, intent, means, effects and targets of cyber terrorism. Comparing this definition to those by Foltz [ 42 ] and Holt [ 43 ], there are some similarities; however, this definition puts further emphasis on the effect of the cyber terrorist activity which is pertinent to better understand what kind of acts actually encapsulate cyber terrorism. In comparison to the definitions proposed by Denning [ 41 ] and Conway [ 40 ], the Plotnek and Slay [ 45 ] definition does not only focus on cyber terrorist activity which may have physical impacts, but also focuses on other effects such as psychological and economic. This is an important aspect in defining the cyber terrorism term as it acknowledges all impacts which technological platforms are having on terrorism and subsequently on communities, rather than just a singular aspect. Although important points are covered in this explanation of cyber terrorism, it is nonetheless a long-winded definition with many different clauses which may not be simply understood. Furthermore, Plotnek and Slay are Australian based researchers and therefore the applicability of their definition to UK legislation is perhaps dubious due to its lack of compatibility with the current definition of terrorism outlined in The Terrorism Act 2006 [ 28 ]. A more suitable approach to defining cyber terrorism more succinctly, could be to divide it into clearer themes and shorter sentences.

Realistically, cyber terrorism is a very broad topic, and a definition which may endeavour to cover all the characteristics which fall under this term is seemingly challenging. Therefore, the attempt to encapsulate every aspect of cyber terrorism under one singular definition may be counter-productive and may potentially be the very notion preventing a unanimously agreed upon definition. Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of compatibility of the above definitions with the UK legislative definition of terrorism, therefore, a cyber terrorism definition could be designed in the context of UK law.

Theoretical Underpinnings of Cyber Terrorism

Terrorists use cyber space for an array of activities including hate speech, propaganda, recruitment and communication [ 46 ]. This literature review found that Routine Activity Theory [ 15 ] and Space Transition Theory [ 14 ] can be applied to cyber terrorism to support a clearer understanding behind the motivations of cyber terrorist offenders, in turn aiding stakeholders in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of cyber terrorism.

Routine Activity Theory

Routine Activity Theory was developed by Cohen and Felson in 1979 and proposed that in order for there to be an occurrence of victimisation, three confluent factors were necessary: first, a motivated offender; secondly, a suitable target; and thirdly, the absence of a capable guardian. When this theory is applied to cybercrime, the notion of physical space is modified into cyberspace [ 47 , 48 , 49 ]. A study was conducted into the relationship between university students and their computers, and it was found that students who had a greater tendency to disregard their computer-oriented lifestyles and/or neglected security software on their computers, were more likely to be victims of computer crimes [ 47 ]. This study highlights a moderation to the original routine activity theory by which the absence of a guardian may not only be a physical person but could also be the lack of security software on a victim’s technological device.

Although this study was specifically about hacking, the cyber routine activity theory has nonetheless been applied to other forms of cybercrimes [ 50 ] and these findings can be applied to cyber terrorism to better illuminate the three confluent factors in relation to online terrorist activity. For example, if there is no computer security or blocked websites, this could enable the motivated offender to carry out a threat or act of terrorist violence against a suitable target.

Space Transition Theory

Space Transition Theory, created by Jaishankar [ 14 ], was developed to better explain the transitioning of cyber-criminal behaviour between physical space, to cyber space and vice versa. This theory explores seven main tenets: (1) propensity to commit cybercrime as a result of repressed offline criminal tendencies; (2) flexible identity within cyber environments; (3) freedom to transition between physical and cyber spaces; (4) criminal opportunity with little regulation and chance of being caught; (5) offenders’ social connections; (6) reduced threat to offenders; and (7) the blurred lines between norms and values within cyber environments. The principles within Jaishankar’s [ 14 ] theory provide greater comprehension in the paradoxical characteristics between traditional and cybercrimes, and three of these can specifically contribute to better understanding cyber terrorism.

Firstly, due to the anonymous nature of cyberspace, there is a straightforward opportunity for cyber terrorists to disguise their identity, previously referred to as dissociative anonymity [ 50 , 51 ]. This anonymity enables terrorists to hide their identity as a way to bypass existing regulations within cyber environments. Second, due to the anonymous nature of cyber environments, this not only impacts how actions can be regulated, but also allows offenders to continue their criminal behaviour with little to no consequences. This is further supported by cognitive inhibition effect in which, due to lack of deterrence, dissociation between the action and the end result encourages the continual terrorist behaviour [ 50 ]. Third, the ability to interchange between physical space and cyber space, alludes to the notion that terrorist activity may potentially manifest in cyber space where there are limited constraints to disseminate propaganda and recruit, prior to moving into physical space where offline impacts may be seen [ 52 ]. This available interchangeability is financially advantageous to terrorist groups as they can achieve their aims and objectives to further their terrorist ideology with reduced monetary costs.

Lastly, if terrorist behaviour is repressed in physical environments, this may encourage terrorists to modify their approaches into cyberspace where activities can be hidden from regulatory bodies and stakeholders involved in combatting terrorism [ 53 ]. Although this was an already advantageous aspect for terrorists, this has become even more significant due to the global COVID pandemic and lockdown restrictions [ 2 ]. Due to a greater increase in terrorist use of cyber space and its dynamic spatial -temporal characteristic, there is a lower risk of being caught due to the vastness of cyber environments [ 52 ]. Overall, the tenets highlighted in Space Transition Theory [ 14 ] simplify the advantageous elements which are enabling terrorist activity to continue mostly uninterrupted.

Categorisation of Cyber Terrorist Activity

According to the Crown Prosecution Service [ 54 ], in order for an action to qualify as terrorism, there needs to be evidence of terrorist motivations. Wilkinson identifies four types of terrorist groups: ethno-nationalist groups; ideological groups; religio-political groups; and single-issue groups [ 55 ]. This identification can be used to inform the types of motivations which can influence terrorist offences. The current legislations for countering the threat of terrorism in the UK are The Terrorism Act 2000 [ 56 ]; The Terrorism Act 2006 [ 28 ]; The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 [ 29 ]; and The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 [ 57 ].

According to the Crown Prosecution Service [ 54 ], some examples of substantive terrorist offences include preparing terrorist attacks; collecting terrorist information; disseminating terrorist publications with intent of encouraging terrorism; aiding in covering up terrorist activity online; supporting a proscribed organisation; attending a place for terrorist training; and financially aiding terrorist activity. In the context of the above offences, one could question the effectiveness of current UK legislation in preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting cyber terrorist activity. For example, the offence of ‘attending a place for terrorist training’ under The Terrorism Act 2006 [ 28 ] may be challenging to apply to terrorist virtual training as there is no geographic “place” due to the boundaryless characteristic of a cyber environment. Both pinpointing the virtual location of training and determining the IP addresses of each individual attending the training session, could make it difficult for stakeholders to detect and prosecute [ 58 , 59 ]. However, as explored in Space Transition Theory [ 14 ], this is an advantageous notion for cyber terrorism due to the anonymity factor. In addition, it is important to note that terrorist activities, such as training and recruitment, have become more reliant on online platforms, especially throughout the COVID pandemic due to restrictions.

Recently, The Department for Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport [ 60 ], released a Draft Online Safety Bill which aims to set out principles for service providers in regulating their services and making them safe for users. It directly highlights principles which should be used to combat online terrorist activity. The draft bill has been under scrutiny for the risk it poses to freedom of speech, privacy and the way in which it will regulate risks to the public [ 61 , 62 ], however, it is nonetheless a step in the right direction to continue combatting the threat posed by terrorism in the UK. Although UK laws can be a beneficial tool in understanding what offences can be prosecuted, it is limited in clearly categorising terrorist offences and their processes in a framework approach.

Smith et al. [ 16 ] conducted a study into the spatial and temporal patterns of terrorist group activity, and although classifying terrorist activity was not a main aim, this was nonetheless achieved and can be used to better understand terrorist processes. This study breaks down terrorist activity into four main categories: (1) recruitment; (2) preliminary organisation and planning; (3) preparatory conduct; and (4) terrorist act. This framework can be useful in gaining a clearer understanding of what general types of terrorist activity occur and, furthermore, how one act can lead to another. This could be a beneficial tool for stakeholders involved in the prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of traditional and cyber terrorism as there would be a clearer understanding of the entailed processes.

McGuire and Dowling developed a dual-binary framework approach which classifies cybercrimes based off their dependence to cyber capabilities [ 7 ]. Cyber-enabled crimes, such as disseminating terrorist propaganda or theft, are traditional crimes which can increase in scale due to technology. On the other hand, cyber-dependent crimes, such as denial of service attacks or hacking, are acts which can only be committed through technological means. This dual binary approach is beneficial as it encourages a clear classification which can be easily understood by direct stakeholders such as law enforcement and prosecution services. However, this approach is limited as it does not apply this model to cyber terrorism [ 7 ]. Considering this approach has been adopted by the Crown Prosecution Service [ 63 ] to better explain the prosecution of cybercrimes, this could be indicative of a lack of understanding towards cyber terrorism from the criminal justice system in the UK. This raises a critical question of whether the criminal justice system is suitably equipped with knowledge in securing the UK against the threat posed by cyber terrorism. Considering the rise of online based terrorism throughout the pandemic [ 2 ], a dual binary approach may not be sufficient, but rather a ternary approach which incorporates traditional, cyber enabled and cyber dependent terrorism, could instead be considered to enhance the understanding of varying terrorist activities and their correlations.

Methodology

Research design.

In order to determine what perceptions were held by the public towards cyber terrorism, a mixed methods approach was chosen over a single method approach as mixed methods enable the researcher to find comparisons and contradictions within the quantitative and qualitative data which overall strengthens the discussion to better understand something, which as highlighted in the literature review, is not yet well understood [ 64 , 65 ]. By utilising a mixed methods approach, quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed simultaneously using positivist (quantitative) and post-positivist (qualitative) paradigms to observe and measure the responses [ 66 , 67 ].

Research Materials

The research material used was a mixed methods questionnaire which consisted of both quantitative and qualitative questions in the form of an online survey which was open to the public. Some benefits of utilising surveys to collect data are that participants are able to answer questions in their own time, and furthermore can answer truthfully without a fear of being judged as they are in a familiar environment [ 68 , 69 ]. Also, online surveys have been found to be beneficial as they are simple to implement and inexpensive compared to traditional questionnaire characteristics such as printing, postage, location and time [ 70 , 71 ].

The online survey was created through Jisc Online Surveys [ 72 ] which was used to create and host the survey for participants to complete the questions using a link. It was important to the research that the survey be made simple for ease of participants to navigate through it themselves and, therefore, where needed, explanations were put in place to aid participants throughout the survey. The survey used a range of demographic questions, dichotomous questions, Likert scale questions, and open questions. Every question gave respondents the opportunity to elaborate on their responses with free text boxes which fed in to the qualitative data.

Participants were specifically asked questions regarding their beliefs towards the way in which cyberspace is enabling terrorism. Participants were asked to share what threat level they believe the UK currently faces from terrorism and were also asked their opinion on the importance of stakeholder’s understanding to improve the UK’s approach to counter cyber terrorism. The questions under this section made up an important part of this research as they directly correlated to the aims and objectives. This enabled the analysis against the demographic groups to be done to ascertain what the sample populations’ perceptions were towards cyber terrorism.

Research Sampling and Procedure

The sampling techniques which were dedicated to this research were convenience sampling and snowball sampling. The convenience sampling method does not rely on probability and takes a sample from a group of people who meet a certain criterion [ 73 , 74 ], where for this research the criteria were easy to reach; availability; and over the age of 18. A limitation of convenience sampling is that it encourages biased results due to the potential proximity of the researcher and the respondents and therefore, opinions in the data may not have the ability to be fairly applied to the general population [ 74 , 75 ]. In light of this limitation, the snowball sampling method was then also utilised by encouraging respondents to share the survey once they had completed it to at least one other person is this would increase the sample size and generalisability of the data [ 76 ]. This would ensure that the sample was more diverse.

The online survey was distributed through a web link which was shared via the researcher’s social media accounts with a short explanation of the research so that participants could make an informed decision of whether they wished to participate or not. The social media sites used included LinkedIn; Facebook; Twitter; and Instagram. The survey was open to the public for 76 days between March and May of 2021, and every Thursday of the week, the survey was reshared on the social media sites to generate a larger sample population. Overall, this achieved a sample size of 83 respondents. As respondents answered questions on topics which they may not have put much thought into prior to completing the survey, this may have hindered their ability to make decent thought-out conclusions in their answers [ 77 , 78 ], potentially making a catalyst of unreliable data.

Data Analysis Techniques

The quantitative data collected from the online survey were analysed using IBM SPSS. This software was chosen for the quantitative analysis as it has been used for research in social sciences due to the straightforward approach it offers for a range of analyses and the researcher does not need any mathematical expertise to use this software [ 79 , 80 ]. Additionally, SPSS allowed for comparative investigation between the data sets to be undertaken to analyse whether there were any strong attitudinal relationships [ 81 ]. More specifically, t tests and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) tests were carried out using SPSS to determine whether there were any strong relationships between demographics and the topical questions.

The qualitative data collected from the online survey were thematically analysed utilising Microsoft Word. This software was chosen for the qualitative analysis as it enabled the researcher to see all the qualitative data together and go through the process of thematic analysis using the highlight feature to colour codes and themes, and further use the control find feature to search for particular words or phrases [ 82 ]. In order to ensure that important data were not missed, the researcher initially became comfortable with the data taking simple notes on opinions which become apparent prior to beginning the coding and thematic categorising stage [ 82 ]. Analysis and interpretation of the qualitative results were conducted in tandem to ensure that any final conclusions were reached following in-depth analysis [ 83 , 84 ].

Ethical Considerations

The British Society of Criminology’s Ethics Statement ensures that within any primary research, safety should be practiced, and ethics should be considered [ 85 ]. Prior to the survey being shared, a number of ethical considerations had to be considered to ensure that the researcher and participants were not placed at risk, and if so that the mitigation strategies were made available. The main ethical considerations which related directly to this research’s research were consent, confidentiality, anonymity, autonomy and debriefing. Steps were taken to ensure that respondents were aware of their rights as a participant when they agreed to take part in the research.

Online Surveys is fully compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018 [ 86 ] and does not record IP addresses to ensure that complete anonymity is maintained. Furthermore, to ensure the data were kept safe and private, only the researcher had access to the raw data which were stored on a password protected account with Online Surveys on a password protected laptop belonging to the researcher. In accordance with the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice Ethics Committee guidelines, the data were stored in the researchers N drive, and after 10 years it will be destroyed. Before the survey could be disseminated, an ethical review was completed by the SCCJ Ethics Committee of the proposed research, and the ethics were approved.

In order to ensure that participants had informed consent and participation was voluntary, an information sheet was included on the first page of the survey. Participants were informed of their rights throughout the survey process and the data collection process and participants were only able to progress to the questions for the survey once they had confirmed they were over the age of 18 and that they consented to everything in the information sheet. A section on debriefing was placed at the end of the survey upon completion which thanked respondents for their participation in the research. Additionally, as the topic of the research was of sensitive nature and could have affected individuals, three helplines and support websites were provided for participants. Finally, the details of the researcher and supervisor were provided in case any respondents had complaints and/or queries regarding the survey.

Results and Discussion

Overall findings from the literature review highlighted that there is a lack of a widely accepted definition and framework for cyber terrorism in the UK. Findings further discovered that theory can be used to better understand cyber terrorist behaviour, thus aiding in a better understanding of what cyber terrorism is. The literature review, paired with this research’s primary data collection, aimed to establish a current definition of cyber terrorism and framework approach which can be utilised by direct stakeholders involved in the prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of cyber terrorism within the UK. The research hypotheses were as follows:

This research hypothesised that misconceptions may be held amongst the general public, especially in the qualitative data, and that this could be a representation of misconceptions held amongst direct stakeholders as they are disseminating this information to the general public

This research also hypothesised that, based on the demographic characteristics of the sample population, significant effects would be found between the gender demographic and the topical questions where females may have been more concerned with the psychological effects of terrorism and males more so with the physical effects. This hypothesis is influenced by research that has found females to hold greater empathic concerns towards individuals’ situations than males [ 87 , 88 ].

In addition, it was hypothesised that significant effects would be found in respondents’ occupations, assuming that occupations from within technology and/or law enforcement categories may hold a more experiential understanding of cyber terrorism within the survey.

Quantitative findings are presented through the use of tables, and qualitative findings are explored through themes supported by quotations from the sample population. Subsequently, the results are discussed, exploring interpretations and implications of the findings in light of the learnt literature. This chapter ultimately develops a definition and framework for cyber terrorism informed by available literature presented in the literature review, and the outcomes of the primary data collection.

Demographics of Sample Population

The primary data were collected from 83 respondents overall. Of the sample population, 45% were male respondents and 55% were female respondents. In context of the age demographic, the highest rate of respondents being amongst the ‘18–24’ group and the lowest number of respondents being from the ‘65 or above’ group. As the survey was distributed amongst the researcher’s social media accounts, this turnout was expected due to the researcher’s connections. The main limitation is the lack of results retrieved from the 65 and above age group, although had this age group been more targeted in the distribution of the survey this would have rejected anonymity and confidentiality of the participants.

The survey offered a total of 25 occupation categories which participants could choose from. Four of these occupations were not selected by any individuals and in addition, some occupations had two or less respondents which implicated the data analysis. Therefore, once all data had been collected, the 21 occupation categories were funnelled down in to nine categories and the data for occupations were recoded in SPSS. The new categories can be seen below in Table 1 . The total sample population for occupation is 81 in contrast to the overall population of 83 as two participants did not disclose their occupation.

Quantitative Results

The quantitative results in this primary data collection aimed to investigate whether demographic characteristics from the sample population had any significant effects on the topical questions from the survey. Further to the hypotheses of this primary data collection, the quantitative results further aimed to establish whether there were any trends or patterns which could be used to better understand what perceptions are held by the public and whether there is a trend leaning towards unanimity or not. A range of t tests and ANOVA tests were used to conduct an overall of 66 basic statistical tests using SPSS to initially investigate significant findings in the data. Overall, 97% of the data were found to have no significant effects, indicating only 2 out of 66 tests had a significant effect.

Gender Findings and Interpretations

Independent t tests were conducted to investigate whether or not gender played a significant role in the way the topical questions were answered. The overall results for the t test can be found in Table 2 where data can be tracked as significant or insignificant in the p value column. As can be seen, the results which found gender to have a significant effect were Q9d and Q13. Although significant results are important to note and interpret, it should be acknowledged that these significant findings merely highlight notions which appear worthy of further investigation and replication [ 89 , 90 ].

The recruitment and mobilisation question asked participants to rank what they felt were ways in which terrorism was being enabled by cyber capabilities from a list of options. Participants were able to choose 3 options with 1 being the most important and 3 being not as important. As there were more than 3 options for participants to choose from in this question, it cannot be assumed what 3 meant to people – it could have meant ‘least important’ to some or ‘not as important’ to others.

Results showed that male participants ( M  = 1.57, SD = 0.746) ranked recruitment and mobilisation higher than females ( M  = 2.04, SD = 0.676) and an independent t-test found this pattern to be significant, t (44) = − 2.23, p  < 0.05. First, these data suggest that males are more likely to include recruitment and mobilisation as an enabled form of cyber terrorism than females. Second, these data also allude to the notion that males are potentially more concerned with the concept of recruiting and mobilising new terrorists. As no effect size was calculated due to an outdated version of SPSS, these data cannot be generalised to a larger population.

Some assumptions can be made based on the implications of these findings regarding gender perception on recruitment and mobilisation within terrorist activity. Due to terrorist groups use of online capabilities, the ability to recruit and mobilise individuals has increased through a greater ease in disseminating information to followers [ 14 , 91 ]. This has especially increased during the pandemic where more individuals have felt anxious, disempowered and alone and have found a sense of community and solace in like-minded groups where inciting violence either in a virtual or physical environment, has been more so attractive than possibly before the pandemic [ 92 ].

As discussed in this research’s literature review, recruitment is one of the first steps in the process of terrorist group activity [ 16 ]. This information, coupled with the male gender effect on ‘recruitment and mobilisation’, could indicate that males are more concerned with terrorist group actions which have a long-term effect such as recruiting individuals, who may play a direct or indirect role in threatening or causing harm to individuals virtually or physically, further down the process of terrorist group activity. This interpretation could be broadened onto a wider scale looking at stakeholders within cyber terrorism where male police officers make up 69% of the police force [ 93 ]. For example, if male police officers are more concerned with the long-term effects of cyber terrorism and are more likely to acknowledge recruitment as a first step in terrorist group activity, there may be a greater interest to detect and combat the terrorist activity being enabled by cyber space before the threat of harm to a community or nation increases. Overall, this could indicate there being a greater ambition to deter terrorism from happening through observing recruitment activity online. In light of these findings, there is a potential for hypothesis 2 to be met on the condition that the study be replicated to calculate the generalisability of these findings.

The final question in the survey, asked participants how strongly they agreed that stakeholders’ understanding of the term cyber terrorism is important in detecting and preventing terrorism in the UK. Zero participants selected the answers ‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’, and only eight participants selected ‘neutral’ which suggests that there is generally overall agreement amongst the sample population that stakeholder understanding is important. However, results showed that female participants ( M  = 1.40, SD = 0.580) were more likely to strongly agree with the stakeholder statement than males ( M  = 1.89, SD = 0.658), and an independent t-test confirmed a pattern of significance, t (72.508) = 3.553, p ≤ 0.05. These data suggest that females are more likely to acknowledge the influence that stakeholders’ understanding of cyber terrorism can have on the detection and prevention of terrorism. It also highlights that male participants are potentially more inclined to take a more ‘neutral’ standpoint towards the statement. These data challenge one to consider the impact which stakeholders lacking in gender diversity may have on the understanding, and subsequently the detection and prevention of cyber terrorism.

In light of this finding, it is important to consider gender diversity within agencies and stakeholders who are associated in tackling cyber terrorism, including policy makers and law enforcement. Research regarding gender diversity has found that more diverse work environments can result in broader perspectives within decision-making and greater effectiveness in work delivery [ 94 , 95 , 96 ]. In addition, one study showed an inclination from female leadership roles in focusing on preventing and resolving matters [ 97 ]. As highlighted, the police work force is 69% males [ 93 ] and potentially making this environment more gender diverse may mean a greater emphasis for broader perspectives in understanding cyber terrorism to prevent, detect, and investigate terrorism effectively. Furthermore, recent statistics indicated that 34% of the MPs in the House of Commons are female [ 98 ]. Although this statistic has been referred to as record high, this nonetheless indicates a disparity in gender diversity within parliament which could be contributing to the difficulties in developing a unanimous definition of cyber terrorism to enable greater prevention strategies against terrorism. Overall, this finding alludes to the necessity for more gender diversity within stakeholders directly involved in detecting and preventing terrorist activity in the UK.

Age and Occupation Findings and Interpretations

ANOVA tests were carried out to establish whether or not age and occupation played a significant role in determining respondent answers. The overall results for age can be found in Table 3 , and the overall results for occupation can be found in Table 4 . Where the M or SD display ‘n/a’, this is indicative of results where respondents from a specific category did not respond to a specific question. This is most probably due to the rank questions only allowing three options to be chosen by each participant to rank in questions 9 and 11. In both these tables, the F value column displays that there were no significant findings with age or occupation. The non-significant results were analysed and the implications of these highlighted.

Discussion on Non-significant Results

The reporting of non-significant results has been much debated amongst academics, with various and differing approaches being encouraged [ 99 , 100 ]. However, it has been strongly posited that non-significant results should not be assumed to represent homogeneity amongst the sample population [ 101 , 102 ]. This is due to the fact that a non-significant result merely highlights what population parameter is unlikely, rather than what it is likely to be [ 103 ].

It can be assumed that the non-significant findings from this primary research were unable to present evidence for all the hypotheses. In order to determine whether a type I or type II error has occurred, replication of the study and re-analysis of the data would need to be carried out to better understand the non-significant results [ 103 ].

In the case of a type II error, it is important to discuss potential influential factors apart from gender, age, and occupation which could have influenced the sample population’s beliefs towards the survey questions, thus resulting in non-significant results. Most pertinent to this primary research is the impact which media outlets have potentially had in shaping perceptions surrounding cyber terrorism. In a contemporary society, the news has become more easily accessible through news media websites and social media platforms, which has increased the way in which public opinion is shaped due to the news’s gatekeeping process [ 32 , 104 , 105 ].

Although news media outlets are beneficial in making the public aware of current events, the implications could potentially be detrimental for stakeholders involved in detecting and preventing cyber terrorism. If public opinion has been shaped to believe that cyber terrorism mainly involves cyber dependent acts such as denial of service attacks, then this may be what the public look out for and subsequently report to the police (recent news examples include [ 106 , 107 , 108 ]). This leaves a gap in which cyber enabled acts of terrorism, such as online terrorist propaganda, may not be as reported by the public due to misconceptions. In turn, this potentially impacts the ability for police to prevent terrorist attacks due to online terrorist activity not being as reported. If a unanimous definition of cyber terrorism could be agreed upon, policy-makers and police could share this through news media outlets to enable the public to have a greater understanding of cyber terrorism, in turn encouraging individuals to identify and report both cyber enabled and cyber-dependent terrorism.

Qualitative Results

Analysis of the qualitative data from the online survey revealed important themes which were evident amongst the majority of the sample population. The qualitative analysis aimed to establish a more in depth understanding of what the public’s perceptions are towards cyber terrorism. Analysis highlighted that the majority of participants were generally in agreement, with only a small number of participants expressing more opposing views.

Among the 83 participants and across all the topical questions there were a total of 198 qualitative responses. Qualitative responses appeared to decline as the survey progressed, with the highest response rate to a single question being 75 responses and the lowest at 3 responses. This has the potential to lessen the validity and generalisability of all the qualitative responses; however, coupled with the quantitative data and the findings from the literature review, it may contribute in the justification for developing a cyber terrorism definition and framework. Figure  1 displays codes and themes from the qualitative analysis. In the discussion of the qualitative data, responses will be displayed as ‘PX’ where ‘P’ indicates ‘Participant’ and ‘X’ an identification number.

Thematic analysis codes and themes from qualitative data. This figure displays the themes and codes which came to light throughout the qualitative analysis of the primary data collected. These themes and codes are reflective of the views and opinions held by the sample population, which are supported further with quotations in the analysis below

Victims of Cyber Terrorism

The first theme which emerged from the qualitative analysis of this research’s primary data collection was the distinction between the two victims of cyber terrorism. On the one hand, the ‘people’ victims of cyber terrorism were highlighted with concerns about “vulnerable” and “young” people raised by P1, P2 and P3, and “uninformed users” raised by P4 and P5. These groups were highlighted as victims of being groomed and recruited in to the terrorist group activity process, but also be victims of virtual and physical verbal attacks from cyber terrorists and extremists. On the other hand, there were also concerns highlighted towards the ‘system’ victims of cyber terrorism where participants included examples such as “data and resources” (P6), “power grids” (P7), and “interfaces” (P8 & P9). One individual (P10) referred to these more physical impacts of cyber terrorism as being “more traditionally what the term [terrorism] is associated with”.

The theme of cyber terrorist victims can be one which encourages confusion as there are different types of victims which could be encapsulated under the cyber terrorism umbrella. McGuire and Dowling’s [ 7 ] cyber enabled and cyber-dependent classification can be used to categorise victims of cyber terrorism which can further aid in developing a more concise classification. ‘Human victims’ of cyber terrorism can be victims of both cyber enabled and cyber dependent actions, which has been broken down further into ‘human victims of cyber dependent terrorism’ (for example, data theft) and ‘human victims of cyber-enabled terrorism’ (for example, verbal abuse on a social media platform). Systems who are victims of cyber terrorism can only be victims to cyber-dependent actions and, therefore, have been classed just as ‘system victims’ (for example, Ransomware attacks on national infrastructure for political gain). These classifications contribute to the development of a framework in this research.

However, it became apparent from the qualitative analysis that there is a blurred line between victims and offenders of terrorist activity with P11, P12 and P13 referring to there being an “ease for terrorists to recruit people” and “alter people’s way of thinking”. These qualitative findings are supported by the findings from the literature review highlighting the complexity in sometimes distinguishing between victim and perpetrator as a result of misconceptions from stakeholders affecting news media outlets [ 30 ]. Interestingly, although the individuals being recruited and groomed are in fact victims, in some cases they too become the offenders for the very things they were once victims of. This paradoxical concept can be better understood through the story of Shamima Begum who left the UK at the age of 15 after being recruited to join ISIS. Since the age of 19, she has been trying to return to the UK as she claims she did not expect to go through everything she did, despite her engaging in known terrorist activity [ 109 , 110 ]. The supreme court recently ruled that they could not allow Begum to return to the UK as this would create a significant national security risk [ 111 ].

As highlighted in Jaishankar’s Space Transition Theory [ 14 ], the anonymous nature of cyber environments allows individuals to hide their true identities which could enable individuals to transition from victim to perpetrator with more ease, either intentionally or inadvertently, further accentuated by cognitive inhibition effect and dissociative anonymity [ 50 , 51 ]. Understanding victims of cyber enabled and cyber dependent terrorist activity could also provide a clearer interpretation of motivated terrorist offenders. Overall, this thematic finding highlights disparities amongst respondents regarding cyber terrorist victims which could be due to the absence of an agreed upon definition and framework detailing what qualifies as a cyber terrorist act. Having a unanimous definition would, therefore, make a clearer distinction between victims and offenders of cyber terrorism.

Increase of Terrorist Online Presence

Another theme which emerged from the qualitative analysis was the way in which respondents emphasised how online capabilities have aided in expanding terrorist activity. P14 alluded to the notion that online platforms “help build a sense of community between members, assist in recruitment, and launch attacks”. Additionally, P15 highlighted the ability which terrorists have “to reach a global audience and form groups which reinforce each other”. There were concerns raised specifically regarding the impact which the COVID pandemic has had on terrorist activity. Although some participants highlighted the risk of terrorism as “lower than before due to COVID” (P16), others seemed to emphasise the advantageous aspects of COVID for terrorist activity as there being “more time to plan” (P17), and one participant nodded at cyber terrorism being “underreported” with the “true scale now being unknown but severe” (P18) due to its greater shift online.

It became evident throughout the qualitative data, that much of the sample population appeared to be mostly in agreement that the threat of terrorism posed through online capabilities is apparent. This is supported by the quantitative findings in Q10 and Q12 where ≥ 80% participants were in agreement that the cyber enabled and cyber dependent acts listed were classed as cyber terrorism. These results also support the findings from the literature review which found that terrorist activity is a process by which the smaller and perhaps less impactful activities are seen to have a domino effect on larger terrorist attacks [ 16 ]. For example, recruitment was identified by 12 participants throughout the qualitative responses which is a positive finding as it indicates that individuals are aware of its impact in the process of terrorist activity. In addition, this links back to the significant effect found on gender where males were more likely to rank recruitment and mobilisation higher than females in the quantitative results. Controversially to these findings, P19 stated that “terrorism, the act, is an offensive action, just recruitment and fundraising themselves are not terrorist acts” which was an opinion also raised by P20, P21 and P22. These qualitative findings highlight the presence of common misconceptions held by some individuals regarding cyber terrorism, which is supported by the findings from the literature review. The UK law in fact deems ‘Encouragement of Terrorism’ under The Terrorism Act 2006 [ 28 ] and ‘Finance and Money Laundering in relation to terrorism acts’ under The Terrorism Act 2000 [ 56 ], as common offences. Although it is positive that respondents appeared to mostly agree on cyber enabled and cyber dependent terrorist offences, the minority of people who did not agree could be only a small representation of the wider public.

In light of the aforementioned theme, the misunderstanding around terrorism offences could also be an attributing factor in causing the general public’s confusion around who is a victim or a perpetrator of cyber terrorism [ 18 , 30 ]. The public has a responsibility to report observed criminal activity, and if there is not enough awareness of cyber enabled and cyber dependent terrorism offences, this could have detrimental implications on the investigation and prosecution of cyber terrorist activity in the UK in line with the Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) campaign [ 112 ]. Understanding these detrimental effects of misconceptions amongst the general public, could suggest an urgent need for cyber terrorism to be unanimously defined incorporating both cyber enabled and cyber dependent aspects. Overall, these findings allude to the potential misconceptions held amongst the public regarding cyber terrorist activity; however, these cannot be generalised without replicating the study with the aim of gathering data from a larger sample population.

Regulation and Stakeholder Understanding

The qualitative analysis further highlighted a theme regarding the regulation of the internet and stakeholders’ involvement in this. The theme of regulation was not introduced to participants within the survey questions, unlike the previous themes, which perhaps highlights the importance of regulatory processes to the survey respondents, in the context of cyber terrorism. P23, in the context of online platforms, stated that these are “too free a space with little to no sense of regulation”, which was a popular opinion with other respondents using words such as moderation, monitor, and regulation on 19 occasions in the qualitative responses. The issue with the lack of regulation on online platforms was further identified by P24 stating “online platforms provide unchecked means of sharing material” and P25 further suggesting the notion of “rumoured safety measures in place”. Interestingly, positive connotations were not associated with regulation in the qualitative responses potentially indicating dissatisfaction regarding the current approaches to regulating online terrorist activity. This dissatisfaction could be a result of ambiguous guidelines on social media and online platform such as those referred to in qualitative responses—“Facebook” (P26 & P27) and “YouTube” (P28, P29, & P30).

YouTube guidelines state that terrorist organisations are not permitted to utilise their services to conduct a range of terrorist activity, for example, “praising or justifying violent acts carried out by a terrorist organisation” [ 113 ]. Facebook states that any entities, such as terrorist organisations, who engage in “serious offline harms” will be condemned alongside any content which praises, supports or represents terrorist organisations [ 114 ]. Problematically, these online platforms do not define the term ‘terrorism’. This means that when it comes to regulating and removing certain online content, the service providers can decide what is deemed terrorist or not according to their own perceptions. Looking at the recent conflict between Israel and Palestine, Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation [ 115 ], fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza strip due to political and religious differences [ 116 , 117 ]. At the time of these events, there was justification and condoning across online platforms for the violent actions directed at Israel from Hamas despite Hamas’ recognition as a terrorist organisation. Furthermore, media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook condemned Israel’s actions, and justification for their retaliation was taken down as ‘misinformation’. A more recent example is the Plymouth shooting. Jake Davison, who practiced hate speech against women, incited violence and spoke about his ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) alignment on YouTube, killed five innocent individuals [ 118 , 119 ]. Davison had just short of 100 subscribers on his YouTube channel, and these were 100 missed opportunities to detect this terrorist activity prior to his online terrorist behaviour becoming a physical attack.

These unclear guidelines which are used to regulate online terrorist activity are evidently biased and counterproductive, which may be the reason for the dissatisfaction towards regulating cyber terrorism highlighted from some of the survey respondents. Furthermore, with repressed behaviour in physical environments due to the COVID pandemic [ 2 , 14 , 53 ], this may encourage online terrorist activity alongside the lack of collaborative regulation. The implications of this are that direct stakeholders involved in combatting online terrorist activity, including online platform providers and law enforcement, are perhaps not able to do so effectively due to the absence of a unanimously agreed upon definition. Perhaps a collaborative approach could ensure clearer regulatory guidelines and may further enable the future instalment of the draft Online Safety Bill [ 60 ] to be more effective.

Q13 from the survey found that 90% of respondents overall agreed that a definition could enable stakeholders to better understand cyber terrorism, in turn aiding in the detection and prevention of terrorist activity. Although this question only received 10 qualitative responses, ‘stakeholders’ were referred to in qualitative responses from other questions, with direct mentions being made of the police, policy makers, and online platforms. P31 stated that “If you don’t consider something a crime or a precursor to a crime, you won’t be looking for it” indicating that unless something is defined as a crime, it will not be identified and reported as such. Furthermore, P32 claimed that there is a need for stakeholders to “understand the objectives of the terrorist and the means used to execute their plans”. As discussed in the literature review, pre-curser crimes could include recruitment, training, or disseminating propaganda which are initial phases in the terrorist activity process [ 16 ]. Therefore, P31 and P32 could be implying that these pre-cursor terms are not clearly defined under cyber terrorism which perhaps indicates an absence of these activities not being policed effectively due to a lack of understanding of terrorist motivations. However, much of the regulation of the internet is controlled by the service providers, and therefore, a more collaborative approach from various stakeholders would perhaps be the most effective way to combat online terrorist activity. This collaborative approach would also ensure that public users of online platforms are safer and more aware of what they can report as terrorist activity, in turn countering future threats posed by terrorism.

Defining Cyber Terrorism

The survey asked participants to expand on how they would define cyber terrorism, and this question received the highest rate of responses from 75 participants. Some respondents classified cyber terrorism into binary models such as “hard and soft” (P33) and “enabled and dependent” (P34). Interestingly, of the 75 responses received for this question, only 40% incorporated terrorism that is both enabled by and dependent on cyber capabilities in their proposed definitions. The remaining 60% of respondents focussed on either cyber enabled or cyber dependent activity. This highlights the confusion that exists within the general public and could be reflective of the general misconceptions which exist, emphasising the need for a unanimous definition of cyber terrorism.

Respondents mostly used the ‘cyber’ prefix within their definitions, with fewer using terms such as ‘online’, ‘technology’, ‘internet’ and ‘virtual’. For example, P35 defined cyber terrorism as “terrorism that uses the cyber domain as a space to carry out its actions”, and P36 stated “cyber terrorism is when terrorist organisations enter cyber space and instrumentalise the internet to carry out violence”. However, P37 highlighted it as the “use of electronic interventions or resources to disrupt online systems or operations”. Despite Gordon and Ford’s [ 44 ] belief that the cyber prefix is not an effective term, the qualitative results find that this is a term which the respondents appear to be familiar with, which could be reflective of the general public’s views. Therefore, attempting to change the cyber prefix to something else, such as Computer Network Operations or Information Warfare [ 38 ], could potentially cause further confusion. These findings, coupled with the literature review, imply that a cyber terrorism definition could encapsulate a classification between enabled and dependent activity. The implications of a clearer definition, as discussed above in the aforementioned themes, would enable stakeholders including law enforcement, online platform providers, policy makers, and prosecution services to work collaboratively towards a unified goal. This may further enhance the public’s understanding of what they could be identifying and reporting in line with the ACT campaign [ 112 ].

Establishing a New Approach Towards Cyber Terrorism

In the context of the findings from the literature review and the collected primary data, this research posits a new definition and framework of cyber terrorism which could be utilised by stakeholders directly involved in preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting cyber terrorism.

Cyber Terrorism Definition

The development of a cyber terrorism definition aimed to gather the strengths of previously discussed definitions and incorporate them in a clear and more concise manner that can be easily understood. The most important factor which was considered for a cyber terrorism definition to be used by UK stakeholders, was the need for it to be compatible with the definition of Terrorism outlined in The Terrorism Act 2000 [ 56 ], The Terrorism Act 2006 [ 28 ], The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 [ 29 ], and The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 [ 57 ]. In addition, themes from the Foltz [ 42 ], Holt [ 43 ], and Plotnek and Slay [ 45 ] definitions have been considered and prioritised for incorporation in this research’s proposed definition. Referring back to the literature review, terrorism as a concept evolves with the times, and henceforth, a cyber terrorism definition should be versatile to ensure its applicability to unpredictable future developments within terrorist techniques. Having identified the most critical components to develop a definition that is both concise and compatible with the legal definition of terrorism in the UK, (binary ‘means’ classification, motive, intent, and target) the following definition is proposed:

“Cyber terrorism encapsulates cyber enabled activity which intends to advance political, social, or religious ideologies against the public, and cyber dependent activity which further intends to threaten or facilitate damage against the public, properties, and/or systems. Cyber terrorism has the potential to coincide with traditional terrorism”.

As identified throughout this research, a clear definition of cyber terrorism could enable a more collaborative approach amongst stakeholders in preventing, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting cyber terrorism. Although this definition is not as lengthy and detailed as some of the other definitions analysed [ 41 , 43 , 45 ], the findings highlighted that a simpler definition with fewer clauses provides greater clarity, encouraging a more unanimous approach across various stakeholders. Overall, by having a clear definition outlined for those involved in detecting and preventing cyber terrorism, this could improve the way in which stakeholders combat the overall threat of terrorism, subsequently enabling the media to relay more accurate information to the public regarding cyber terrorist activity. This could in turn make the public more confident in identifying and reporting terrorist and cyber terrorist activity in line with ACT [ 112 ].

Cyber Terrorism Framework

The development of a framework for cyber terrorism aimed to clearly highlight what kind of terrorist activity occurs in cyber space, the process, and the links between traditional and cyber terrorism. Using the Smith et al. [ 16 ] categorisation of traditional terrorist activity, this research proposes a similar approach by incorporating McGuire and Dowling’s [ 7 ] cyber enabled and cyber dependent dual binary model. As this model has already been adopted by the Crown Prosecution Service to classify and prosecute cybercrimes, it is perhaps important that the same binary model be used to classify cyber terrorism for collaborative work amongst law enforcement and prosecuting services.

Based on this research’s proposed definition, a ternary approach is suggested as this highlights the inextricable links between traditional, cyber enabled and cyber dependent terrorism. A proposed ternary model can be seen in the Terrorist Activity Framework in Fig.  2 .

Terrorist activity framework entailing cyber terrorism—developed from [ 7 , 16 ]. This figure displays a framework which highlights cyber terrorist activity’s life cycle. It highlights cyber enabled terrorist activity, cyber-dependent terrorist activity and traditional terrorist activity with arrows to show the links between these three components. This framework is put forward from this paper’s findings to better aid stakeholders in more collaboratively tackling terrorism

This cyber terrorism framework highlights the similarities across the three identified types of terrorism and further accentuates how each of them link into one another with the use of arrows. The different pathways all lead to examples of ‘terrorist acts’, however, it is important to acknowledge that the first three stages leading up to the fourth stage all have the potential to be occurring simultaneously. In addition, the first three stages in the cyber-enabled pathway have the opportunity to branch out to the fourth stage in the traditional and cyber dependent pathways as much of cyber-enabled activity can be supporting activity for the other pathways. It is further important to highlight that the ‘recruitment’ stage in traditional terrorism and cyber-enabled terrorism has the ability to remain active throughout the whole process as these activities are not specific to a single terrorist attack. Therefore, stakeholders should consider these ongoing background processes when detecting traditional terrorism and cyber terrorism. Although this framework is limited as it does not list every single type of terrorist offence under each pathway, it nonetheless highlights a few examples which can better inform law enforcement of the intricate relations between each pathway to improve investigative practices in countering terrorism.

Recommendations and Conclusion

This paper, and the research within, intended to contribute to current academic and professional discussion regarding cyber terrorism and how it is defined and understood amongst UK stakeholders involved in preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting cyber terrorism. Through critically analysing currently established definitions, theories and frameworks related to cyber terrorism, this research highlighted the problematic nature in the lack of a unanimous understanding. In light of this, a new cyber terrorism definition was proposed which incorporates cyber enabled and cyber dependant activity. Furthermore, by developing Smith et al.’s [ 16 ] terrorist activity process, this research proposed a potential ternary framework which could be utilised by UK stakeholders to gain a better understanding of cyber terrorist behaviours and their inextricable links to traditional terrorism. Although the definition and framework concisely define and classify cyber terrorism in light of the findings from the literature review and the primary data collection, further editing from stakeholders would be recommended to ensure complete compatibility with UK legislation, and stakeholder procedures. Subsequently, this research recommends that specific legislation regarding cyber terrorism be developed to support UK stakeholders in preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting cyber terrorist activity. Furthermore, although this paper specifically analysed the necessity for a definition and framework in context of the United Kingdom, this proposed definition and framework are nonetheless generic and could, therefore, potentially be adopted for use by other nations. In doing so, a more collaborative international approach could be established to increase the efficacy of countering cyber terrorist activity, overall better securing society from the risk of terrorism.

The secondary aim of this research was to determine what the public’s perception of cyber terrorism was through a mixed methods primary data collection approach. The quantitative data highlighted a gender effect on questions regarding recruitment as a cyber-enabled terrorist act, and stakeholder understanding in the context of combatting cyber terrorism. However, the rest of the quantitative data were non-significant and as a result of this, there was not sufficient evidence to substantiate some of the hypotheses surrounding demographic effect on topical questions. In light of the non-significant data, this research further recommends that the primary research be replicated and shared out to a wider audience to generate a larger sample population and determine whether the non-significant results from the primary data collection are due to type I or type II errors [ 90 , 103 ]. By gathering a clearer and more generalised understanding of the public’s views, UK stakeholders can better identify what the general public’s perception is, which could better inform clearer campaigns to educate the public on identifying and reporting cyber terrorist activity.

The literature review highlighted that news media outlets can have an effect on the way in which the public understand a matter, and analysis of the non-significant findings suggested that in the case of a type II error, this could be due to news media outlets’ gatekeeping role in disseminating information regarding cyber terrorism to the public [ 32 , 104 ]. Therefore, this research recommends that further research be carried out regarding the correlation between news media outlets which individuals read/listen to, and their perceptions of traditional and cyber terrorism.

Overall, this research has offered an insight into how cyber terrorism could be defined and classified for UK stakeholders as part of the search for the ‘holy grail’ [ 1 ]. This research specifically highlighted the importance of correlating a new definition and framework with UK legislation for enhanced compatibility and effectiveness. In current times with the COVID pandemic enabling the evolution of terrorist activity [ 2 ], it is ever more important to clearly understand and adapt stakeholder procedures in countering cyber terrorism in the UK.

Availability of Data and Material

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Code Availability

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This article is part of the topical collection “Cyber Security and Privacy in Communication Networks” guest-edited by Rajiv Misra, R K Shyamsunder, Alexiei Dingli, Natalie Denk, Omer Rana, Alexander Pfeiffer, Ashok Patel and Nishtha Kesswani.

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Jangada Correia, V. An Explorative Study into the Importance of Defining and Classifying Cyber Terrorism in the United Kingdom. SN COMPUT. SCI. 3 , 84 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-021-00962-5

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Received : 28 September 2021

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-021-00962-5

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How to access the terrorism prevention literature library.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) developed a comprehensive and publicly available literature review and ontology dashboard to organize Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) literature. This new capability streamlines the ability for end users and practitioners to access peer-reviewed and methodologically sound research products to develop an evidence base in the field of terrorism prevention for what works, what doesn’t, and why.

To develop this capability, S&T reviewed TVTP articles published in peer-reviewed journals on topics such as current TVTP research, existing TVTP research, and evaluations of TVTP programs. Queries focused on major TVTP concepts such as diversion, mitigation, resilience, program evaluations, transferrable programs, and international programs.

Articles in the ontology dashboard are searchable by Title, Author, Abstract, Author Keywords, and Themes (also known as nodes). Articles are hierarchically organized in the dashboard, which can show relatedness through parent and child nodes. For instance, an article about a diversion program in the UK would be coded under diversion programs and international programs. Content was coded through two qualitative approaches: content analysis and ground theory coding. The coding process was iterative, allowing for changes and additions as new themes and understandings emerged.

CVE Ontology Dashboard Platform

Mendeley – a free and publicly accessible desktop application and website that allows users to manage, share, and discover content and authors for research – was selected to host the literature library. Mendeley offers both a downloadable desktop application and web-based mode.

Desktop Features

• Automatic extraction of bibliographic information
• Full-text search (including grep) as well as filters (authors, keywords, etc.)
• Sharing of library with colleagues

Website Features

• Online backup of library
• Ability to “follow” topics and authors as new research becomes available and recommendations for similar papers and topics based on user history
• Ability to export files as .xml

Ontology Dashboard Access Instructions

Create account and sign in.

• Go to www.mendeley.com .
• Click “Create account” in banner at top of page.
• Enter your email address and choose a password.
• Return to www.mendeley.com
• Click “Sign In” in the banner on the top of the page.
• Enter username and password.
• Click “Sign In.”

Importing the Master Library

• Go to the " Terrorism Prevention Literature Dashboard BIB File " page.
• Download the BibTex file for the Master CVE Library; save this file to your local drive.
• Navigate to the Library tab and locate icon in the top left corner (+ Add).
• Navigate to the .bib file on your local drive, select and open the file to import.
• To synchronize the web version with the desktop version (if users choose to download the app), open the desktop version, and it should sync automatically. If not, click the “Sync” button in the top menu.

Users, Groups, and Functionality Explained

Each user has access to their own unique library. Each user can customize their own unique library with folders, tags, and articles.

To share an article with the group, go to the “Groups” tab and click “Attach Documents” to select the article you wish to share. All members of the group will now see the article, and can then add it to their own library.

This allows each member to customize their own library to their specifications, and changes they make will not affect other users’ libraries.

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