Terrorism Studies Commons^™

Cybersecurity In An Age Of Cyberterrorism, University Of South Alabama

Crime/Violence

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from the University of South Alabama.

The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal: The Effect Of Future Awards On International Terrorism, Casey J. College

Arbitration Law Review (2009 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Are Dhs Technology Grants For Local Police Departments An Effective Tool Against Terrorism?, Erika Mcginty

Student Theses

This paper examines the effectiveness of allocating funds to the nation’s police departments for the prevention of domestic terrorism, as is done annually through the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Grants Program. The program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, has distributed billions of dollars since its 2003 inception in equipment, software, and technology services based on the recipient police agencies’ own risk assessments of local terrorism. Much of the technology desired by police consists of systems of mass surveillance; this thesis focuses on implementations of surveillance video cameras or CCTV, license plate readers, and unmanned aerial vehicles. …

Post-9/11 Media Coverage Of Terrorism, Zachary S. Mitnik

Student Theses

Media coverage of terrorist attacks plays an important role in shaping the public understanding of terrorism. While there have been several studies analyzing coverage of terrorist incidents prior to 9/11, there has been little research examining post-9/11 coverage. This study fills this gap by examining the media’s coverage of terrorism in the United States between the dates of September 12, 2001 and December 31, 2015. The analysis is based on a list of terrorist-related incidents and New York Times articles written on each incident. This study documents the amount of coverage received by these incidents and identifies the variables influencing …

The Power Of Prayer, Victoria Dawn Thompson

Capstone Collection

If words are arbitrary, how does prayer have power?” is the question of inquiry in this paper. An unobtrusive Content Analysis inquiry methodology was used to answer this question. The answer lies in the finding that words and thoughts are not the same thing, and our thoughts expand beyond the audible and visible. The implication for professional practice these findings present is that a deeper awareness of “Self” is needed to understand people’s miraculous way of resolving conflict via prayer.

Proliferating A Culture Of Fear: Islam In A Post 9/11 America, Setareh Motamedi

Political Science Student Papers and Posters

The threat of terrorism perceived by the American public has been shaped by a series of traumatic events over the past decade. In the years following the attacks of September 11, 2001, fear of terrorism has extended beyond the threat of terrorist groups. Much of the American public considers not only terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, but the entire religion of Islam to be a security threat. In much of this security discourse, ideas of hatred, violence, and terror have become associated with Islam. This study explores that association, and aims to identify what motivates existing stereotypes. Drawing on research from …

Education As Counter Terrorism In Iraq, Thanaa Sulaiman

English (TESOL) Master Theses

There is not much research written about the relationship between education and the rise of terrorism. Some scholars have urged for educative response to end terrorism (Krueger and Maleckova, 2003; Brockhoff et al., 2015; Malazada, 2016; Illiteracy rates drop in Iraq: Government, 2014) In his study, Brockhoff et al., (2015) found that when country specific factors like the economic situation and political representation were unfavorable, education is the reason some individuals become terrorists. Abrifor (2008) concluded that abuse of students in Nigeria lead them to get involved in criminal activities, suicide bombing and terrorism. In light of these studies, it …

Unconventional Lawfare: Operational Law In The War On Terror, L. P. Miller

Political Science Student Scholarship

This thesis examines the legal work required to establish a sufficient lawfare defense by focusing on the Department of Defense Judge Advocate Generals’ Corps (JAG Corps). The work will describe the JAG Corps as a well-trenched bureaucracy with a moral mission to uphold the military’s honor through laws, and how this was interpreted by the Bush and Obama administrations.

A Radical Idea: Applying Psychological Strategy To Combat Foreign Fighters Defending The Islamic State, David Michael Smaney

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the necessity of psychological strategies to combat the Islamic State’s recruitment of foreign fighters. This thesis argues that psychological strategies are a primary weapon due to the psychological nature of the war against the Islamic State, which is a part of the overall war of ideas. This thesis does not consider psychological strategies for other aspects of U.S. counterterrorism strategy, nor does it reflect the difficulties involved with developing U.S. strategies in the U.S. federal government. Furthermore, this thesis only focuses on foreign fighter defending and supporting the Islamic State, which is the successor of Al …

Recollection Bias And Its Underpinnings: Lessons From Terrorism Risk Assessments, Richard J. Zeckhauser, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Recollection bias is the phenomenon whereby people who observe a highly unexpected event hold current risk beliefs about a similar event that are no higher than their recollection of their prior beliefs. This article replicates and extends the authors’ previous study of recollection bias in relation to individuals’ perceptions of the risks of terrorism attacks. Over 60% of respondents in a national U.S. sample of over 900 adults believe that the current risk of a future terrorist attack by either an airplane or in a public setting is no higher than they recall having believed, respectively, before the 9/11 attack …

A Muslim Registry: The Precursor To Internment?, Sahar F. Aziz

BYU Law Review

Being political scapegoats in the indefinite “war on terror” is the new normal for Muslims in America. With each federal election cycle or terrorist attack in a Western country comes a spike in islamophobia. Candidates peddle tropes of Muslims as terrorists in campaign materials and political speeches to solicit votes. Government officials call for bold measures—extreme vetting, categorical bans, and mass deportations—to regulate and exclude Muslim bodies from U.S. soil. The racial subtext is that Muslims in the United States are outsiders who do not belong to the political community. A case in point is the “Muslim ban” issued by …

Funding Terror: An Overview Of Financing Methods, John Robert Flores Jr.

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Terrorism in the Middle East has plagued the United States for over a decade and groups, like ISIS, show that terrorism can be well organized and financed. From a homemade bomb to a small army, each act of terrorism requires funding to turn hateful speech into an action. In the Middle East, funding for terrorism falls into three major categories: criminal, legal, and charity from like-minded individuals. Despite public disdain for global terror there are still some individuals, both foreign and domestic, who seek to fund terrorist attacks. Finding the sources of this funding is essential in order to stem …

Enhanced Response Plan For Woodland Primary School, Brian Harper

CUP Undergraduate Research

The city of Woodland, Washington sits along the very busy north and south railroad line that connects Portland and Vancouver with the Tacoma and Seattle areas and beyond. Each day over a dozen trains carrying a vast assortment of cargo goes rumbling by, some of it is mundane and some are volatile. What is very worrisome is that the Woodland Primary School is only a hundred meters from the tracks. Although remote, there is always the possibility of a train derailment close to the school. The local emergency services have plans for a train derailment, they fall under their standard …

Practicum Methods And Research: East County Fire & Rescue Eop Scope, Kyle Henderson

CUP Undergraduate Research

East County Fire & Rescue (ECFR) operates in and around the city of Camas, Washington. This small fire and rescue entity is tasked with a plethora of daily responsibility ranging from medical emergencies to forested emergency issues. Because ECFR is tucked in with Vancouver Fire & Rescue as well as the Camas Fire Department, they are reliant upon each other in emergency situations to carry out mitigation, response, reaction and recovery strategies. Having a detailed Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) that includes hazards analysis, capabilities assessments and other concepts of operations is essential to having every operating entity on the same …

Local/State Emergency Management Relationships, Joshua L. Van Dyke

CUP Undergraduate Research

Oregon is challenged with a regional liaison program that is understaffed, underfunded, and not a primary role within the Oregon Office of Emergency Management (OEM). This paper is going to examine what Oregon’s program could look like if the “regional liaison” was stand-alone position for several staff or at least a primary role within Oregon OEM. Programs from other states will be used for comparison in order to help build the picture. There are many challenges to the current program as well as creating a permanent liaison position - those will be briefly looked at. Lastly, some recommendations will be …

Practicum: Clark College Emergency Operations Plan 2017, Jesse Tillie

CUP Undergraduate Research

While no one likes to think or talk about anything that is high-risk, low-probability, emergency preparedness has become the new reality check. With the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Joplin Tornado, it has become imperative that local governments, private companies, everyday citizens and even educational institutions; address these growing concerns. Moving forward, there must be a focus on creating and disseminating effective plans grounded in foundational emergency management techniques. Emergency management is a term sometimes described as a series of transitional phases such as mitigation, preparedness, response, and recover. These management phases were created to create strategies …

The Apocalyptic Imagination And The Fundamentalist Mindset, Charles B. Strozier

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the psychological meanings of the apocalyptic imagination in what I call a fundamentalist mindset. That mindset has its own long history but is newly relevant in the nuclear age. We no longer need God to bring about ultimate destruction. There are many facets of the fundamentalist mindset (for example, its intense literalism), but the focus in the article is on two: its kairotic sense of time and its rampant paranoia. These two facets interact synergistically around violence that is experienced by those who revel in it as moral in a totalistic sense. Killing becomes healing. The evil …

Suicide Terrorism: Performance Violence As Public Plunge, Gregory Saathoff

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the relationship between the social psychology of the individual and the final abyss of suicide terrorism. The boy on the high dive is a metaphor for the fearful pause before the leap. For a young child, the dive is exciting and dangerous: the fearful pause is somewhat analogous to thoughts and feelings before the terrorist’s catastrophically destructive contemplated homicidal/suicidal behavior. If we think about the leap itself, there may be a better analogy. Is there any corollary to a specific group of suicide completers? What can be learned from others who have contemplated and undertaken perhaps the …

Understanding The Appeal Of Isis, Lydia Wilson

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Islamic State, or ISIS, has proven to be persistently successful in attracting people from all over the globe to join in its state-building and state-defending enterprise. This article explores the messages it has crafted, from the utopian to the militarily defensive, and the techniques it uses to propagate these messages (including on social media), which includes some historical comparisons to communism and Nazism. It goes on to provide initial research findings from the field to show how their message is working among (a small percentage of) the target audience, sketching the theory of identity fusion to argue that it …

Why We Have The Center For The Resolution Of Intractable Conflict In Oxford, John, Lord Alderdice

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Center for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict (CRIC) was formally established at Harris Manchester College by a decision of the Governing Body of the College in 2013 to facilitate research, teaching and training, seminars and conferences, and direct engagement in situations of political violence and long-standing community conflict in various parts of the world.

The CRIC is a very young institution, but already it is having an impact out of proportion to its size and modest resources. This is because the issues we are addressing have a heightened public profile and also because of the quality and leading-edge of …