Online Radicalisation Research

The globalisation of mass communication and the permeation of the internet into almost all aspects of society has further enabled serious societal threats to exploit and target European citizens, businesses and, through the emergence of online terrorism, democratic ideals. Concerned with these existing and emerging challenges, PROPHETS seeks to analyse, assess and fight these myriad of emerging threats through addressing the very factors that underlie their cause in addition to the numerous and far research Problems that they create as well as empowering LEAs with an online platform to identify and highlight these causes at root. PROPHETS strives to distil and further enrich societal understanding of the factors that underpin the core of these issues, issues which have led to reported increases in prominent security challenges; namely cybercrime incidents including those associated with terrorist use and exploitation of the internet. In order to do so, PROPHETS seeks to investigate and understand the behavioural processes at the cause of indiviuals engaged in cybercrime actions and therefore focuses on:

The concept of Behavioural Radicalisation may be taken to mean: the process in which an individuals’ moral, ethical, logical and emotional societal norms and awareness are compromised, leading to an increased risk of supporting, or directly engaging in, illegal and anti-societal activities. In this case we are concerned with the increased engagement with cybercrime and online aspects of terrorism.

Online behavioural radicalisation processes are those that slowly desensitise, Isolate and immoralise individuals towards either carrying out or supporting extreme acts. Whilst, online cybercrime is increasingly interwoven with aspects of terrorism and organised crime, it is important to note the primary concern of PROPHETS is in identifying the online factors which lead to the behavioural radicalisation that precedes many acts of cybercrime or related online terrorism.