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The psychological effects of cyber terrorism

When ordinary citizens think of cyber threats, most are probably worried about their passwords and banking details, not a terrorist attack. The thought of a shooting in a mall or a bombing at an airport is probably more frightening than a cyber breach. Yet terrorists aim for mental as well as physical destruction, and our research has found that, depending on who the attackers and the victims are, the psychological effects of cyber threats can rival those of traditional terrorism.

Cyber aggression has become a daily fact of life in the 21st century, yet for most people it’s still only a reality in the form of cyber crime—hackers targeting financial information or other personal details. Politically motivated attacks might threaten them as well, but they tend to be the concern of governments and corporations rather than ordinary citizens. The thought of a terrorist shooting in a mall or bombing in an airport probably seems far more frightening to the average person than Russian hackers disrupting government networks in Estonia or Anonymous breaking into the police department of Ferguson, Missouri. Cyber terrorists, after all, have yet to actually kill or injure anyone. Yet our research has found this perception of cyber aggression might not be entirely accurate. The aim of terrorism, after all, is not just physical destruction, and depending on who the attackers and the victims are, the psychological effects of cyber terrorism can be just as powerful as the real thing.

Defining cyber terrorism

People face cyber aggression on an almost daily basis. Hackers appropriate, erase, or ransom data, defraud bank customers, steal identities, or plant malevolent viruses. In many cases, hackers are criminals out for pecuniary gain. But sometimes their motives are political. Some are “hacktivists,” or cyber activist groups, like Anonymous, others are terror groups like Hamas or Islamic State, and still others are agents of national states like Iran, North Korea, or Russia. They are not usually after money but pursue a political agenda to foment for social change, gain political concessions, or cripple an enemy. Sometimes their means are peaceful but other times they are vicious and violent. The lines often blur. Anonymous will hack the Ferguson police department just as it will initiate an “electronic Holocaust” against Israel in support of the Palestinian cause ( Rogers 2014 ). Islamic activists will not only use the Internet to recruit members and raise funds for social welfare projects but also to steal money for terrorist activities or disseminate information to stoke fear and demoralize a civilian population. States will pursue online espionage but also wreak havoc by crashing multiple systems—as did the Russians, allegedly, in Estonia in 2007, with mass denial-of-service attacks on government sites, and in Ukraine in 2016, with cyber attacks on the airport and power grid ( Polityuk 2016 ).

Underlying many of these attacks is terrorism: an attempt to extract political concessions by instilling fear in the civilian population. In this way, cyber terrorism is no different from conventional terrorism. Yet cyber terrorism is far more subtle. To date, cyber terrorists have neither killed nor injured anyone. Nor have cyber terrorists successfully destroyed any critical infrastructures. Whether this is due to the offensive inadequacies of the terrorists or the superior defensive capabilities of the United States and its allies, experts have yet to decide.

But as the war on cyber terrorism continues, it is increasingly clear that protecting vital national interests is only half the battle. Security experts rightly worry about defending transportation networks, refineries, dams, military installations, hospitals, banks, and government offices from cyber attack just as they worry about defending the same facilities from terrorist bombs or ballistic missiles ( Lewis 2002 ). Yet lost in the haze of cyber warfare is the human dimension. While scholars and policy makers raise concerns about the dangers that cyber terrorism holds for national security, we know little about its effects on human security.

Human security emphasizes the conditions necessary for a vibrant civil society ( Tadjbakhsh 2014 ). At the most basic level, people must be able to live free of undue fear, anxiety, and trepidation. At a more developed level, civil society requires energetic public discourse, judicious public policy, and respect for human dignity. Following 9/11, we now recognize that conventional terrorism undermines human security even more than national security. It is a common truism that terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead ( Jenkins 1975 ; Lerner et al. 2003 ). The dead are few; it is the living whose daily lives are transformed by the constant fear of impending doom. Conventional terrorism exacerbates feelings of insecurity and perceptions of threat that prompt public cries for protective and militant government policies that can short-circuit public discourse, intensify intolerance for dissident views, and infringe on human rights ( Boggs 2002 ; Hirsch-Hoefler et al., 2014 ). Does cyber terrorism cause similar effects?

At first glance, it seems that it cannot. In their attempts to formulate the law of cyber warfare, the framers of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare remain unconvinced that cyber attacks that block e-mail, deny service, employ economic coercion, undermine confidence in the government or economy, or, in their example, “cause panic by falsely indicating that a highly contagious and deadly disease is spreading through the population” cause sufficient mental suffering to rise to the level of a terrorist attack ( Schmitt 2013 , §11.2, 3; 30.12; 36.3; 59.9). Unfortunately, these assumptions are untested and in a series of field experiments we studied how cyber terrorism affects psychological well-being and political attitudes that impinge upon human security by causing stress, anxiety, and fear—all of which radicalize political attitudes and push people to exchange privacy for security to prevent cyber terror in the future.

Simulating cyber terrorism

In our field survey experiments, we first interviewed 522 individuals following Anonymous’s well-publicized attempt to perpetrate an “electronic Holocaust” in April 2015, when the hacktivist group promised to take down servers and “erase Israel from cyber space.” In a second study, in January 2016, 907 subjects viewed various film clips describing hypothetical Hamas attacks on Israel’s national water company. In one scenario, cyber terrorism was fatal; terrorists poisoned the water supply with an overdose of chlorine that killed two and injured many more. In other scenarios, cyber terrorism was not lethal; no one suffered physical harm but hackers appropriated the bank account numbers of the company’s customers and successfully transferred money to Hamas. A third group of subjects viewed a fatal but conventional mass-casualty terrorist attack, while a control group viewed a neutral film depicting the dedication of a water treatment plant. Following these screenings, we surveyed respondents on measures fundamental to human security. These included stress, anxiety, insecurity and threat perception, political militancy, and a willingness to relinquish privacy and civil liberties in favor of security.

In some ways, Israelis are a unique population for such a study. The ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians (and Palestinian allies like Hezbollah and Iran) is a constant feature of everyday life. Terrorism, too, simmers beneath the surface. Since January 2015, terrorists have taken 23 civilian lives in Israel. Yet Israelis know their enemy, know what they want and can imagine the way to peace. This puts terrorism and cyber terrorism in the context of a political struggle that has, in many ways, fixed and acceptable costs. Like a couple of wary boxers, each side circles the other, constantly poking and provoking. This leaves Israelis, who score very high on the UN’s world happiness index, weary but resilient.

In contrast, the West’s confrontation with radical Islam is enigmatic and exceptionally violent. In the same period since the start of last year, 67 Americans and 197 Europeans have lost their lives in terrorist attacks. Unlike Israelis, Americans and Europeans don’t know their enemy, have no clear idea what they want or how to confront their demands. Islamic State attacks are brutally violent for their own sake. Americans and especially Europeans will find resilience elusive as terrorism and cyber terrorism fuel an inescapable cycle of fear. Learning from the Israeli case and understanding the effects of cyber terrorism for other Western nations is crucially important.

Measuring stress and insecurity

Not surprisingly, exposure to cyber terrorism is stressful. Figure 1 uses the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) to show how stress and anxiety grow as attacks become more deadly. With a score of 4.00, conventional mass-casualty terrorism (e.g., suicide bombings) evokes a level of anxiety at the top of the scale. The stress scores for lethal and non-lethal cyber terrorism are not far behind, and all the scores significantly surpass the control group. But the interesting point is this: Individuals were equally disturbed by lethal and non-lethal cyber terrorism, meaning there is no significant difference between the two when it comes to stress. Both cause significant panic and anxiety and both, it seems, are equally capable of cracking the foundations of personal wellbeing and human security.

Anxiety in the Wake of Terrorism

CONTROL: No terrorism

CYBER TERRORISM, NON-LETHAL: Disclosure of account information, loss of funds

CYBER TERRORISM, LETHAL: Deaths and injuries

CONVENTIONAL TERRORISM, LETHAL: Deaths and injuries

Cyber terrorism also left individuals insecure and wary of future cyber terrorist attacks. These judgments are measures of threat perception and gauged by such questions as: “To what extent do cyber attacks undermine your sense of personal security?” and “To what extent do you feel threatened by cyber terrorism?” Like stress, threat perception increased steadily as attacks grew more severe ( Figure 2 ). But even in our control group, Israelis are on edge and exposure to non-lethal cyber terrorism did not appreciably increase perceptions of threat. Lethal attacks, on the other hand, did trigger a significant jump in threat perception and it didn’t matter much whether they were cyber or conventional terrorist attacks. These findings show how stress and threat perception are two different phenomena. Stress is emotional while threat perception is cognitive. And while lethal and non-lethal cyber attacks evoke feelings of stress, only terrorism accompanied by injury and loss of life nurtures a serious preoccupation about the next attack. If a person’s reaction to cyber terrorism has both an emotional and cognitive dimension, it is also sensitive to circumstance and the identity of the perpetrator. After it was clear that Anonymous’s threat of an “electronic Holocaust” was empty, threat perception fell by 10 percent. People were still fearful, but not so much. But many Israelis do fear Hamas. and when that group, rather than Anonymous, was the perpetrator, threat perceptions increased by 20 percent, from a mean score of 2.9 to a score of 3.5. Hamas is a far more frightening adversary than Anonymous, even as they perpetrate similar attacks.

Threat Perception and Insecurity

Stress, anxiety, insecurity, and perceptions of threat do not stand alone. Instead, we know that studies of conventional terrorism show how stress, anxiety, and heightened perceptions of threat radicalize political attitudes and draw individuals away from concerns about civil liberties to worries about national security ( Verton and Brownlow 2003 ). In the wake of mass-casualty terrorism, individuals turn inward, disparage outgroups, move to the right on security and privacy issues, and call upon their government to take strong military action ( Canetti et al. 2013 ; McDermott 2010 ). The effects can have a chilling effect on civil society and political discourse in many democratic nations, as debates about torture, rendition, due process, military belligerency, and surveillance show. We were not surprised to see similar effects from cyber terrorism.

Political reactions

Figures 3 and ​ and4 4 depict an array of political attitudes that harden in the wake of terrorism. As noted, individuals in our first survey confronted an ongoing cyber attack by Anonymous and in the second, a simulated attack by Hamas. In each case, we asked individuals about their support for internet surveillance, government regulation, and military retaliation in the context of an unspecified cyber terror attack. Questions centered on surveillance and civil liberties (“Should the government monitor emails and social networks for suspicious phrases?”; “Are you willing to let the government read emails to improve personal and national security?”), 1 government regulation (“Should the government require businesses to install cyber security systems?”), and military retaliation (“Following a cyber terrorism attack, should the government respond with a small-scale cyber attack against military targets, a large-scale cyber attack against military and civilian targets, a small-scale conventional (missiles, bombs, and artillery) attack against military targets, or a large-scale conventional attack attacks against military and civilian targets?”)

Percent Favoring Survelliance and Government Regulation

Percent Favoring Small-Scale and Large-Scale or Conventional Retaliation

CYBER RETALIATION SMALL SCALE: Cyber attacks against military targets

CYBER RETALIATION LARGE SCALE: Cyber attacks against military and civilian targets

CONVENTIONAL RETALIATION SMALL SCALE: Kinetic attacks against military targets

CONVENTIONAL RETALIATION LARGE SCALE: Kinetic attacks against military and civilian targets

Attitudes varied depending on the perpetrator. When Anonymous was the attacker, 54 percent of the respondents in our survey would allow the government to monitor e-mails for suspicious phrases, 48 percent would allow the government to monitor Facebook and Twitter, and 23 percent would allow the government to read e-mails. When the perpetrator was Hamas, support for government surveillance leaps to 67 percent in favor of monitoring e-mails, 46 percent in favor of monitoring social media, and 61 percent in favor of reading e-mails. Among Americans in general, by contrast, only 43% of the respondents would allow the US government to monitor the communications of US citizens ( Shelton et al. 2015 , 6). Among Israelis, support for surveillance depends on the identity of the perpetrator. And while the identity of the attacker did not affect calls for government regulation (74 percent of the respondents would require business to install cyber security software) fears of Islamic terrorism dominate the public’s demand for military responses. As Figure 4 demonstrates, individuals facing Hamas terrorism were considerably more militant and supported conventional retaliation by a margin of nearly 2:1 compared to those facing the hacktivist group Anonymous. One reason may be greater fear of Hamas but another may be the recognition that Hamas, like Islamic State, has infrastructures and territory vulnerable to conventional attack. On the other hand, it is fear of Hamas rather than its vulnerability that drives greater support for surveillance. These data highlight the public’s willingness to employ conventional military measures to quash cyber terrorism, strong attitudes that will no doubt influence political leaders as they weigh kinetic military responses to cyber threats ( Libicki 2014 ).

From a psychological perspective, the data offer a curious finding. We expected to find a clear connection between exposure to cyber terrorism and militant, hardline attitudes. The harsher the terrorist attack our subjects experienced, the greater their militancy. But this is not what we discovered. Instead, we found that the greater one’s perception of threat , the greater one’s militancy. The odds were more than twice as high that individuals with high levels of threat perception will support surveillance, government regulation, and military retaliation compared to those whose threat perception is lower. We cannot explain why some individuals are more fearful than others. Past exposure to cyber attacks explains only a small part of the variance. Other personality factors, beyond the scope of our study to examine, are also probably at work. Nevertheless, it is clear that the threat of terrorism and how one perceives it are better determinants of militancy and hardline attitudes than the experience of an actual attack. And, indeed, this is how terrorism works. One need not suffer direct harm to be terrorized; it is enough that one fear direct harm to suffer the ravages of contemporary terrorism, whether cyber terrorism or conventional terrorism.

From Anonymous and Hamas to Islamic State

These results offer tantalizing evidence that cyber terrorism mirrors conventional terrorism even when its victims do not suffer injury or loss of life. We found that cyber terrorism increases stress, anxiety, fear, hardline attitudes, and political militancy. But circumstances matter, because the identity of the perpetrator helps explain the political attitudes related to cyber terrorism. Hamas is more threatening than Anonymous. When Hamas is at the wheel, Israelis see a brutal terrorist organization and do not much distinguish between cyber and conventional terrorism. Anonymous, on the other hand, still carries some cachet as a rogue hacktivist group that is unwilling or unable to harm anyone physically. Hamas, for the most part, poses no threat to Americans and Europeans. But Islamic State certainly does, and it will not be long before the group gains the capabilities to mount cyber-terrorism attacks. And, as with Hamas, the fact that these attacks might cause little physical harm may be irrelevant. Islamic State, like Hamas, will trade on its ruthless terrorist image. Leveraging its success at conventional terrorism, it will move seamlessly and effectively to cyber terrorism to produce outsized fear and panic. Marrying conventional and cyber terrorism will have chilling effects: Islamic State and other terrorist groups will be able to achieve the dramatic effects of suicide attacks and mass casualties at the relatively low cost and risk of cyber terrorism. There will be no need for suicide cyber bombers. Cyber terrorism is a force multiplier that can magnify the effects of limited, sporadic, and even failed kinetic terrorist attacks. In tandem, conventional and cyber terrorism can undermine human security in a most fundamental way.

Restoring human security

Human security thrives when societies are open, tolerant, peaceful, and vibrant, and when they offer citizens the conditions necessary to flourish economically, intellectually, physically, and emotionally ( Tadjbakhsh and Chanoy 2007 ). Physical security is a necessary condition for human security but not sufficient if civil society fails to allow its members to thrive. To thrive, individuals must maintain tolerance and social discourse. By inducing stress and anxiety, cyber terrorism endangers psychological wellbeing and increases perceptions of threat even if individuals suffer no physical harm. Once cyber terrorism successfully breaches a critical infrastructure to kill and injure (as in our film clips), these effects are more pronounced. Threat perception is not all bad. Reasonable perceptions of threat are essential to protect individuals and their communities from dangerous surprises but become disabling when they foster insecurity and prompt visions of an inescapable cycle of violence ( Canetti-Nisim et al. 2009 ). It is the nature of cyber terrorism to target civilians ( Gross 2015 , 153–183). Some of this is mere efficiency: Civilian targets are softer than military targets or critical infrastructures, which states take great pains to protect. But part is strategic: Targeting civilians is a way to demoralize and terrorize. This is precisely what Anonymous, Hamas, and Islamic State promise to do.

In response, civilians are increasingly willing to jettison privacy and support military retaliation. Neither outcome bodes well for human security. Privacy embraces the right to keep secrets and preserves a domain for individuals to build their personal identities and communicate without interference or duress. Surveillance inhibits free speech, discourages political opposition, prevents dissenters from organizing or publishing anonymously, and disrupts the flow of information necessary for a well-functioning civil society. Surveillance threatens privacy but not without cause. Surveillance can strengthen physical security. Gaining access to the content of e-mails and social media may allow law enforcement authorities and intelligence agencies to co-opt and cripple hostile organizations. Physical security is as important for human security as privacy. Balancing the two will be exceptionally challenging in the shadow of cyber terrorism, and cyber security experts and policy makers cannot unilaterally fortify the former at the expense of the latter.

Political militancy is equally problematic. Facing cyber terrorism and the threat it poses to national and human security, governments consider a range of tempered policies that include criminal prosecution, counter espionage, and active cyber defenses. Because most offensive cyber attacks fall far short of war, each of these retaliatory responses is freighted with fears of escalation that the United States and other nations wish to avoid. Nations must be careful as they weigh their responses to hostile cyber operations ( Hathaway et al. 2012 ). Civilians, particularly those who already find themselves in the midst of an armed conflict, are less restrained and may push their governments in unwarranted and dangerous directions as they call for harsh military retaliation following cyber attacks. Human security does not demand pacifism but it thrives best in a society that is cautious about the use of armed force. Cyber terrorism, like conventional terrorism, upends judicious decision making.

Eliminating the toxic effects of cyber terrorism is not simply a matter of cyber security. It is not enough to thwart or reduce the incidence of cyber-terror attacks. Protecting facilities is only half the battle. Fear, insecurity, anxiety, and militancy are often the product of perceived, not actual, threats. Cyber terrorists lurk in the background, and individuals will not be mollified unless they are eliminated. Despite their best efforts, however, no government will ever eradicate cyber terrorism, and people will always be driven by their outsized fears. Mitigating these fears is as equally important as reducing the incidence of attack. But the means are entirely different. Perceptions depend crucially on information and, as a result, risk assessment and communication are of crucial importance is the war against cyber terrorism. Individuals who misunderstand the nature of cyber terrorism and the threat it poses are most likely inclined to greater fear, insecurity, and militancy than those whose assessment is sober. Experts, to be sure, remain divided over the risk of cyber terrorism. Nevertheless, the cyber security community must address the fears of everyday citizens by cogently assessing the danger of cyber terrorism and the protective measures necessary to maintain secure networks. Risk communication is sorely lacking; properly implemented, it can reduce insecurity and perceptions of threat. Finally, there is also room to think about psychological intervention and cognitive behavior therapy to treat cyber terrorism–induced anxieties, just as it is used to treat the effects of conventional terrorism. 2 Risk assessment and psychological treatment protocols address the human dimension of cyber terrorism and should not be neglected as nations work to fend off cyber terrorists of all stripes.

Cyber terrorism has many faces, as does the psychology of the masses. Our research demonstrates how even non-lethal, seemingly banal forms of cyber terrorism have a considerable impact on the attitudes of victimized populations. Our experiments show a “cyber terrorism effect” that enables terrorists to foster fears akin to kinetic terrorism and pursue similarly ideological goals. In this way, cyber terrorism pushes well beyond cyber crime even when its methods—identity theft, destruction of data, and disruption of service—are sometimes similar. When Anonymous threatens an electronic Holocaust by corrupting data or stealing identities, they are taking sides in violent, armed conflict, and their actions are far more than criminal. They are attacking innocent civilians, not bilking an easy mark. Victims know the difference. Under attack, they react with not only fear and trepidation, as do victims of crime, but with demands for protection from the enemies of the state via harsh military retaliation, surveillance, and strong government. This is the psychology of terrorism.

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible, in part, by grants awarded to Daphna Canetti from the US National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH073687), from the Israel Science Foundation (594/15), and from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (2009460), and to Michael L. Gross from the Israel Science Foundation (156/13).

Biographies

Michael L. Gross is a professor in and the head of the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Israel. His recent books include The Ethics of Insurgency (Cambridge 2015) and Moral Dilemmas of Modern War (Cambridge 2010).

Daphna Canetti is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and the director of the university’s graduate program in Democracy Studies. Canetti’s research examines the psychological challenges and policy implications of terrorism, warfare, and political violence. Her publications appear in political and psychological outlets including the Lancet , the American Journal of Political Science , the British Journal of Political Science , and Political Psychology . Her commentary has been featured in media outlets including NPR and the Washington Post .

Dana Vashdi is the head of the Division of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research focuses on the well-being of citizens in general and of employees in particular as well as on teams in public organizations, organizational learning, and healthcare policy. She has published articles in a wide variety of academic journals including the Academy of Management Journal , the British Medical Journal, Human Resource Management , and Public Administration Review .

1 “Reading” and “monitoring” are different. “Monitoring” suggests either the collection of metadata or only reading e-mails that trigger security concerns, while “reading” suggest scrutinizing every e-mail.

2 For example, see Somer et al. 2005 .

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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A comprehensive review of Cyber Terrorism in the current scenario

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Computational techniques to counter terrorism: a systematic survey

• Published: 03 June 2023
• Volume 83 , pages 1189–1214, ( 2024 )

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• Jaspal Kaur Saini 1 &
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Terrorist Network Analysis (TNA) is the field of analyzing and defining the scope of terrorism and researching the countermeasures in order to handle exponentially increasing threats due to ever growing terrorist based activities. This field constitutes several sub-domains such as crawling the data about terrorist attacks/groups, classification, behavioral, and predictive analysis. In this paper we present a systematic review of TNA which includes study of different terrorist groups and attack characteristics, use of online social networks, machine learning techniques and data mining tools in order to counter terrorism. Our survey is divided into three sections of TNA: Data Collection, Analysis Approaches and Future Directions. Each section highlights the major research achievements in order to present active use of research methodology to counter terrorism. Furthermore, the metrics used for TNA analysis have been thoroughly studied and identified. The paper has been written with an intent of providing all the necessary background to the researchers who plan to carry out similar studies in this emerging field of TNA. Our contributions to TNA field are with respect to effective utilization of computational techniques of data mining, machine learning, online social networks, and highlighting the research gaps and challenges in various sub domains.

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This work was partially supported by Cyber Security Research Centre, Punjab Engineering College (Deemed to be University), Chandigarh, India.The author Jaspal K Saini is grateful to Visvesvaraya PhD scheme for Electronics and IT for funding this research.

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Saini, J.K., Bansal, D. Computational techniques to counter terrorism: a systematic survey. Multimed Tools Appl 83 , 1189–1214 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-15545-0

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Research Paper On Cyber Terrorism-A Global Security Threat

Terrorism, one of the vilest crimes, faced by the human community has posed an immense challenge in the post Cold War period. It has existed since the emergence of human societies endangering innocent lives and jeopardizing human rights and fundamental freedoms. Though the conventional motives have remained the same, the traditional concepts and methods of terrorism have taken new dimensions that are more destructive 1 and deadly in nature. In the age of information technology the terrorists have acquired an expertise to produce the most deadly combination of weapons and technology, which are much more modern and scientific. This phenomenon where the cyber space is used to launch terror attacks is also known as cyber-terrorism. It has the potential to do indeterminable harm not only by paralyzing computer infrastructures but also comprehending the use of the cyberspace to support and organize traditional forms of terrorism, such as bombings and suicide attacks. It also poses a deadly threat on the national security of a state by offering a garb of anonymity to the perpetrators of terror. The increased dependency on information technology has dramatically increased the security risks. This new menace will be a severe challenge to global security unless there are appropriate security measures to help prevention. Hence, to understand cyber terrorism, and find out the ways in which the terrorist organizations are using the advantage of this new technology, a look at its background is necessary. This paper shall make an attempt to discuss the rising incidents of cyber terrorism across the globe, the meaning and concept of the term, the motives and methods behind an attack. It shall also discuss the regional and international mechanisms to prevent cyber terrorism, and recommend what more could be done.

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Expert Commentary

White supremacy: Research on cyber-racism and domestic terrorism

This updated collection of research aims to help journalists better understand and ask more probing questions about white supremacy and far-right organizations.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource May 18, 2022

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/race-and-gender/white-supremacy-research-cyber-racism/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This roundup of research on white supremacy, originally published in July 2019, has been updated with new information and research to assist journalists covering the Buffalo mass shooting on May 14.

In his speech Tuesday in Buffalo, where 10 people died in a mass shooting in a majority-Black neighborhood, President Joe Biden called white supremacy a “poison” that has “been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes.”

The May 14 massacre is among a string of mass shootings spurred by racial hatred in recent years. The lone suspect, an 18-year-old white man, allegedly shot and killed 10 people and injured three others at the Tops Friendly Market after researching New York communities with the biggest Black populations. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia has said the attack will be prosecuted as a hate crime .

The gunman livestreamed the killings from a helmet camera as he moved from the parking lot into the supermarket, armed with an AR-15-style rifle with the N-word painted on its barrel, according to officials .

“What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism,” Biden told journalists, community leaders and others gathered at the Delavan Grider Community Center on May 17. “Violence inflicted in the service of hate and a vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group.”

The killing spree in Buffalo in many ways resembles the mass shooting in the Texas border city of El Paso in 2019.  An armed gunman motivated by hate killed 23 people and injured about two dozen more at a local Walmart . The 21-year-old white man who confessed to the crime told police he had targeted Mexicans.

Like the El Paso shooter, it appears the Buffalo shooter published a racist screed online prior to the attack. Officials are trying to verify the authenticity of the 180-page document, which includes details about the planned supermarket killings.

“A document circulated widely online seemingly outlines [his] racist, anti-immigrant and antisemitic beliefs,” The Associated Press reports . “Among them was a desire to drive all people not of European descent from the U.S.”

Reporting on white supremacy and providing appropriate context is difficult but critical work. The Journalist’s Resource encourages news outlets to look to academic research as a necessary tool in covering complex topics such as domestic terrorism, the mainstreaming of white supremacy and their consequences. Research will help newsrooms ground their coverage and ask more probing questions.

Below, we’ve summarized a sampling of published studies and working papers that examine white supremacy and far-right organizations, including their online recruitment strategies and use of genetic ancestry tests to establish race. We also summarized a book chapter from the Handbook of Global Media Ethics , released late last year, that offers insights into how journalists can improve their coverage. We will update this collection as scholars publish new data and research on these topics.

At the bottom of this page, you’ll find additional resources we hope you’ll find helpful — for example, links to research organizations investigating these topics, an Anti-Defamation League database of hate symbols and 10 tips for covering white supremacy and far-right extremists .

—————–

Covering white supremacy and racism

News Coverage of Racism, White Supremacy, and Hate Speech Katherine M. Bell and Andrea Cervantez. Chapter in Handbook of Global Media Ethics, 2021.

In this chapter of a book on media ethics, researcher Katherine M. Bell looks at how journalistic norms help preserve racist ideas and maintain “an ideological privileging of whiteness.” One problem: Although research indicates right-wing extremists pose a bigger threat in the U.S. than radicalized Muslims, journalists often have portrayed this form of terrorism as a minor threat — isolated incidents involving troubled individuals, she writes.

Bell also argues that traditional journalism practices “such as objectivity, event-based news routines, and a slavish reliance on official sources” have facilitated populism and overt white supremacy. So do newsroom policies guiding word choice.

Many journalists do not use the term “terrorism” in their coverage unless official sources such as police investigators use it, explains Bell, an associate professor of communication at California State University, East Bay. This, she writes, “means that the media embed the motives and institutional biases of public officials into their coverage. These include racial profiling of suspects and a known contingent of white supremacists on police forces and other government agencies.”

She urges journalists to name racism and xenophobia when they encounter it and stop allowing politicians and others to define those terms. She also warns against propagating the myths that racism is an aberration and racism is rooted in ignorance that can be corrected with education.

“A mainstream media portrayal of Donald Trump as singularly foul malefactor or a mentally declining fool is an ethical choice,” she writes, adding that portraying actors such as Trump as “nuts” makes it easy for progressive-minded individuals to ridicule and brush off their behavior.

Factors influencing right-wing terrorism

The Determinants of Domestic Right-Wing Terrorism in the USA: Economic Grievance, Societal Change and Political Resentment Piazza, James A. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 2017.

In this study, James A. Piazza , a political science professor at Pennsylvania State University, looks at the impact of a variety of economic, social and political factors on domestic, right-wing terrorism over four decades. He focuses on three categories of possible predictors of terrorism: economic hardships and grievance; societal changes aimed at empowering and including women and racial minorities and reducing white male privilege; and resentment toward the U.S. government and political system.

The main findings: Rising abortion rates and female participation in the labor force precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks in the U.S., as does the election of a Democratic president. Meanwhile, there is not a statistically significant link between the growth of minority populations and domestic terrorism. Piazza finds that poverty, Democratic control of state government and increased federal income tax rates also are not predictors of domestic terrorism.

Piazza analyzed 578 incidents of right-wing terrorism in the U.S. between 1970 and 2011, which were documented by the Global Terrorism Database , maintained by the University of Maryland’s Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Data for the year 1993 were unavailable, however, because that information was lost during an office move.

Piazza defines domestic terrorism as “attacks occurring within the boundaries of the 50 states, perpetrated by U.S. citizens or residents against other U.S. citizens or residents with the intention of influencing a primarily domestic, U.S. audience.” Almost one-quarter of terrorist attacks during this period were by people and organizations motivated by right-wing ideology.

He finds that for every one point increase in a state’s abortion rate, right-wing terrorist incidents rose by 7.5%. But women entering the workforce and the election of a Democratic president have a greater impact. “For every 1% increase in female participation in the workforce, right-wing terrorist incidents increase by 153.1%, and attacks increase by 241.2% in years when the President is a Democrat,” Piazza writes.

“The results clearly highlight the social factors driving right-wing terrorism,” he writes. “Right-wing extremist rhetoric squarely places the source of ills afflicting ‘traditional’ American society and the proscriptive dominance of white males on the new, more prominent and more empowered place carved out for women in American life. As it turns out, the empowerment of women directly boosts right-wing terrorism.”

The Rhetoric of White Supremacist Terror: Assessing the Attribution of Threat Blessing, Jason; Roberts, Elise. Working paper for Syracuse University’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, 2018.

In this paper, researchers at Syracuse University look at who white supremacist terror groups portray as threats in their propaganda literature. They focus on three terror groups: the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and the Christian Identity movement. For this project, the researchers traveled to the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements at the University of Kansas, which houses one of the largest collections of literature and media from right-wing political movements in the U.S.

The researchers examined documents circulated among the general public by leaders within these three groups. They note that the 1,297 pages they examined aren’t representative of the overall body of materials available, but offer insights into the kinds of themes presented in white supremacist propaganda.

The authors explain that two primary themes emerged from their analysis: “(1) African-Americans as a threat to conceptions of White self-identity; and (2) Jews as … the main political threat to the White Supremacist Movement.”

“Elites from the KKK, Neo-Nazi, and Christian Identity factions repeatedly call for whites to carry out violence against Blacks and Jews,” the authors write. “Rhetoric regarding other racial and ethnic populations, while present to some degree, pales in comparison to rhetoric regarding Jews and Blacks.”

The researchers explain that even as the country undergoes economic and demographic changes, white supremacists continue to focus on black and Jewish communities.

“This suggests that, despite the rhetoric devoted to immigrant communities and poor economic conditions, violent White Supremacist organizations may be mobilizing in response to what they see as traditional and long-standing threats/enemies to their goals,” the researchers write. “As such, the law enforcement community should remain focused on protecting the African-American and Jewish communities — communities that have been the dominant focus of calls to arms by White Supremacists.”

Cyber racism

Online Networks of Racial Hate: A Systematic Review of 10 Years of Research on Cyber-Racism Bliuc, Ana-Maria; et al. Computers in Human Behavior , 2018.

A team of researchers examines dozens of studies published between Jan. 1, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2015 to understand the goals and strategies of racists on the internet. The researchers point out that most of the 31 studies they examined involve text analyses of “online phenomena that involve racial hate, aggression and prejudice.”

The researchers find that cyber-racism tends to come from two groups: racist organizations and individuals who often act anonymously. Racist organizations tend to use websites to communicate racist messages and ideas. They also communicate via online games located on racist websites. The authors write: “Racist groups use these channels to reach, not only general, but also very specific audiences. For instance, the video games made available to the public from far-right groups’ sites are often used as hidden opportunities to present a more attractive image of racist groups to existing and potential members, particularly targeting a younger audience.”

Individuals acting independently post racist content on a wider array of channels, including news websites, blogs, discussion forums, chat rooms and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. “The Internet allows racist messages to be communicated, not only by text, static images and symbols, but also by downloadable videos, music, and interactive online games,” the authors explain.

They find that racist organizations carefully plan out their communication to achieve three primary goals: to strengthen the group by increasing the commitment of existing members and recruiting new ones, to disseminate racist propaganda, and to create a sense of transnational identity. Individuals have a different aim — to validate their racist views and hurt the “outgroup,” typically racial, ethnic and religious minorities.

The authors find that the two categories of racists also have different strategies for achieving their goals. Organizations stress intergroup conflict, reframe racism as a natural response to white oppression and use humor to try to make racism mainstream. The strategies of individuals include trivializing racism, reframing the meaning of news coverage and creating “moral panic” about the outgroup.

Cyberhate: A Review and Content Analysis of Intervention Strategies Blaya, Catherine. Aggression and Violent Behavior , 2018.

In this research review, Catherine Blaya , president of the International Observatory of Violence in School at Nice Sophia Antipolis University in France, examines efforts to prevent or counter cyberhate in various countries. She looks specifically at efforts to fight cyberhate against children, teenagers and young adults who are racial, ethnic or religious minorities. A key takeaway: While many programs have been launched, none have been found to be effective. “Although intentions are good,” she writes, “we have no evidence that the steps that are undertaken are effective in preventing and reducing cyberhate.”

Blaya examined 18 academic papers and reports, including those from human rights-related organizations and think tanks. They focus on four types of interventions — new policies that regulate free expression online; the use of technology to filter, block or address aggressive or hateful content; programs that teach young people how to evaluate online hate speech and address it; and programs that encourage “counterspeech” and prompt young people to respond to it with “counter-narrative campaigns.”

Blaya stresses the need to “develop research and rigorous evaluation protocols for the evaluation of interventions to prevent and counter cyberhate.” She encourages international and inter-agency cooperation. “Hate online is a multifactorial issue that cannot be prevented or tackled unilaterally and locally,” she writes.

Use of genetic ancestry testing

Genetic Ancestry Testing Among White Nationalists: From Identity Repair to Citizen Science Panofsky, Aaron; Donovan, Joan. Social Studies of Science . 2019.

How do white supremacists react when their peers’ genetic ancestry tests show they have non-white ancestry? To find out, researchers examined conversations about genetic tests on the white supremacist website Stormfront.org. According to the study, the website’s users were more likely to critique the genetic test or testing company than support or shame the people who posted what they considered to be disappointing results.

The researchers — Aaron Panosky , a sociologist at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, and Joan Donovan , director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy — examined 639 posts dated between 2004 and 2016 in which users disclosed the results of their genetic ancestry tests. The posts occurred within 70 different discussion threads.

“The main finding here is that there are vastly more reactions about the interpretation of GATs [genetic ancestry tests] themselves than reactions to the individuals posting the results,” the authors write. “The wide range of discussion suggests GATs don’t have a clear meaning and represent a problem to be worked through by Stormfront users. Furthermore, emotionally supportive responses roughly balance out responses that take the results literally (as opposed to suspiciously) and shame, exclude or denounce the poster as not white.”

The study offers insights into the ways the website’s users criticize and support one another and measure “whiteness.” The posts also offer insight into the conspiracy theories the website’s users share and discuss.

The researchers note that the ancestry tests have encouraged white supremacists to further educate themselves about racial genetics, including genetic markers. The researchers suggest the tests could change how white supremacists compare themselves to others. “Consumer genetic tests are increasingly offering genetic trait prediction — from hair and eye color to tasting preferences to IQ — which will soon provide white nationalists ample material for adding notions of ‘genetic quality’ to their evolving identities, boundaries and racial theories.”

Additional resources:

• The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism , commonly referred to as START, is a research center located at the University of Maryland that is “comprised of an international network of scholars committed to the scientific study of the causes and human consequences of terrorism in the United States and around the world.”
• The Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism , located at Syracuse University, does research on national and international security and counterterrorism.
• Data & Society is a New York-based research institute that examines technology and automation.
• The Southern Poverty Law Center is an advocacy organization that tracks hate groups in the U.S.
• The Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, an anti-hate organization founded in 1913, is “a clearinghouse of valuable, up-to-the minute information about extremism of all types — from white supremacists to Islamic extremists.” The Anti-Defamation League’s “ Hate on Display ” database identifies the more than 200 hate symbols used most often by white supremacists and other hate groups.
• Joan Donovan is director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School. She’s also the project lead on media manipulation at Data & Society.
• Jessie Daniels is a sociologist at the City University of New York who has written two books on white supremacy, White Lies and Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights . Her new book, Tweet Storm: The Rise of the Far-Right, the Mainstreaming of White Supremacy, and How Tech & Media Helped, is forthcoming.
• Harvard race and history scholar Khalil Gibran Muhammad offers advice on when journalists should use the term “racist.”

This image was obtained from the Flickr account of Joe Piette and is being used under a Creative Commons license . No changes were made.

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway

U.S. Department of the Treasury

U.s. department of the treasury releases report on managing artificial intelligence-specific cybersecurity risks in the financial sector.

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released a report on  Managing Artificial Intelligence-Specific Cybersecurity Risks in the Financial Services Sector. The report was written at the direction of Presidential Executive Order 14110 on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. Treasury’s Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection (OCCIP) led the development of the report. OCCIP executes the Treasury Department’s Sector Risk Management Agency responsibilities for the financial services sector.

“Artificial intelligence is redefining cybersecurity and fraud in the financial services sector, and the Biden Administration is committed to working with financial institutions to utilize emerging technologies while safeguarding against threats to operational resiliency and financial stability,” said Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang. “Treasury’s AI report builds on our successful public-private partnership for secure cloud adoption and lays out a clear vision for how financial institutions can safely map out their business lines and disrupt rapidly evolving AI-driven fraud.”

In the report, Treasury identifies significant opportunities and challenges that AI presents to the security and resiliency of the financial services sector. The report outlines a series of next steps to address immediate AI-related operational risk, cybersecurity, and fraud challenges: 

• Addressing the growing capability gap. There is a widening gap between large and small financial institutions when it comes to in-house AI systems. Large institutions are developing their own AI systems, while smaller institutions may be unable to do so because they lack the internal data resources required to train large models. Additionally, financial institutions that have already migrated to the cloud may have an advantage when it comes to leveraging AI systems in a safe and secure manner.
• Narrowing the fraud data divide.  As more firms deploy AI, a gap exists in the data available to financial institutions for training models. This gap is significant in the area of fraud prevention, where there is insufficient data sharing among firms. As financial institutions work with their internal data to develop these models, large institutions hold a significant advantage because they have far more historical data. Smaller institutions generally lack sufficient internal data and expertise to build their own anti-fraud AI models.
• Regulatory coordination.  Financial institutions and regulators are collaborating on how best to resolve oversight concerns together in a rapidly changing AI environment. However, there are concerns about regulatory fragmentation, as different financial-sector regulators at the state and federal levels, and internationally, consider regulations for AI.
• Expanding the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework could be expanded and tailored to include more applicable content on AI governance and risk management related to the financial services sector.
• Best practices for data supply chain mapping and “nutrition labels.”  Rapid advancements in generative AI have exposed the importance of carefully monitoring data supply chains to ensure that models are using accurate and reliable data, and that privacy and safety are considered. In addition, financial institutions should know where their data is and how it is being used. The financial sector would benefit from the development of best practices for data supply chain mapping. Additionally, the sector would benefit from a standardized description, similar to the food “nutrition label,” for vendor-provided AI systems and data providers. These “nutrition labels” would clearly identify what data was used to train the model, where the data originated, and how any data submitted to the model is being used.
• Explainability for black box AI solutions.  Explainability of advanced machine learning models, particularly generative AI, continues to be a challenge for many financial institutions. The sector would benefit from additional research and development on explainability solutions for black-box systems like generative AI, considering the data used to train the models and the outputs and robust testing and auditing of these models. In the absence of these solutions, the financial sector should adopt best practices for using generative AI systems that lack explainability.
• Gaps in human capital.  The rapid pace of AI development has exposed a substantial AI workforce talent gap for those skilled in both creating and maintaining AI models and AI users. A set of best practices for less-skilled practitioners on how to use AI systems safely would help manage this talent gap. In addition, a technical competency gap exists in teams managing AI risks, such as in legal and compliance fields. Role-specific AI training for employees outside of information technology can help educate these critical teams.
• A need for a common AI lexicon.  There is a lack of consistency across the sector in defining what “artificial intelligence” is. Financial institutions, regulators, and consumers would all benefit greatly from a common AI-specific lexicon.
• Untangling digital identity solutions.  Robust digital identity solutions can help financial institutions combat fraud and strengthen cybersecurity. However, these solutions differ in their technology, governance, and security, and offer varying levels of assurance. An emerging set of international, industry, and national digital identity technical standards is underway.
• International coordination.  The path forward for regulation of AI in financial services remains an open question internationally. Treasury will continue to engage with foreign counterparts on the risks and benefits of AI in financial services.

As part of Treasury’s research for this report, Treasury conducted in-depth interviews with 42 financial services sector and technology related companies. Financial firms of all sizes, from global systemically important financial institutions to local banks and credit unions, provided input on how AI is used within their organizations. Additional stakeholders included major technology companies and data providers, financial sector trade associations, cybersecurity and anti-fraud service providers, and regulatory agencies. Treasury’s report provides an extensive overview of current AI use cases for cybersecurity and fraud prevention, as well as best practices and recommendations for AI use and adoption. The report does not impose any requirements and does not endorse or discourage the use of AI within the financial sector. 

In the coming months, Treasury will work with the private sector, other federal agencies, federal and state financial sector regulators, and international partners on key initiatives to address the challenges surrounding AI in the financial sector. While this report focuses on operational risk, cybersecurity, and fraud issues, Treasury will continue to examine a range of AI-related matters, including the impact of AI on consumers and marginalized communities.

Read Treasury’s AI Report here.