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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda's Digital Magazine Inspire And Self-Radicalization, Susan Currie Sivek
Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda's Digital Magazine Inspire And Self-Radicalization, Susan Currie Sivek
Faculty Presentations
Inspire magazine, a digital publication of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, seeks to motivate potential terrorists to carry out attacks in the West. The magazine has seemed to be effective, resulting in its connection to a number of recent plots. This presentation discusses the magazine’s potential for aiding prospective terrorists through the self-radicalization process.
Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda’S Digital Magazine Inspire In The Self-Radicalization Process, Susan Currie Sivek
Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda’S Digital Magazine Inspire In The Self-Radicalization Process, Susan Currie Sivek
Faculty Publications
Al Qaeda is today a fragmented organization, and its strategic communication efforts now focus largely on recruiting individuals in the West to carry out “individual jihad” in their home countries. One Al Qaeda–affiliated publication, Inspire, represents an unusual use of the digital magazine format and content for recruitment. This study examines the content and design of Inspire to determine how the magazine may advance the self-radicalization that it seeks to induce in its readers. This analysis finds that the magazine weaves together jihadist ideology, a narrow interpretation of Islam, and appropriations of Western popular culture to maximize the publication’s …