ABSTRACT

This book explores the online strategies and presence of Salafi-Jihadi actors in the Nordic as well as the international context.

Global Salafi-jihadism has been at the epicentre of international focus during the past decade. This book explores how the Swedish and other Nordic Salafi-jihadist sympathisers have used social digital media to radicalise, recruit, and propagate followers in relation to foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and online communities. The chapters in this volume unpack different perspectives of Salafi-jihadi communications strategies, as well as how the international Salafi-jihadi community has constantly reconfigured and adapted to changing security conditions. The case studies of the Nordics constitute a microcosm of wider Salafi-jihadi narratives in relation to the rise and fall of the Islamic State’s so-called ‘digital caliphate’.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, counter-extremism and counter-terrorism, social media and security studies.

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Preface

1. Introduction

Magnus Ranstorp, Linda Ahlerup and Filip Ahlin

2. Swedish jihadists on social media

Linus Gustafsson

3. Swedish ‘media jihad’: The active role of Swedish terrorists and supporters in Islamic State media

Michael Krona

4. The attractions of Salafi-jihadism as a gendered counterculture: Propaganda narratives from the Swedish online "sisters in deen"

Henriette Frees Esholdt

5. Puritan Salafis in a liberal democratic context

Susanne Olsson, Simon Sorgenfrei and Jonas Svensson

6. Militants and media in Denmark: Addicted to Facebook?

Tore Hamming

7. IS’s global digital arenas: Strategy and platforms

Gunnar Weimann, Beatrice Berton and Antonios Samouris

8. The propaganda and narratives of the Islamic State: A gender perspective

Anita Perešin

9. Making sense of the Islamic State’s post-territorial (d)evolution: From "remaining and expanding" to "erosion and struggle

Charlie Winter

10. Conclusion

Magnus Ranstorp, Linda Ahlerup and Filip Ahlin

Index