Understanding, Locating and Constructing Cyberterrorism

Chapter Overview

This chapter engages with the concept of cyberterrorism by investigating three connected questions. First, to what – if anything does cyberterrorism refer, and from where does its meaning derive? Second, how useful is this term for academics, policymakers, legislators and other potential users? Third, what problems or limitations might be identified with the concept of cyberterrorism? The chapter begins with a brief account of the concept’s emergence in the 1980s, linking this to two prominent dynamics of this period: a post-Cold War geopolitical reshuffle, and the rise of new security concerns linked to the Internet. Upon this, we note that although the concept has become increasingly prominent in the intervening years, its meaning has, if anything, become more rather than less contested. The chapter’s second section builds on our account of this contestability by exploring whether it is useful, or even desirable, to situate cyber-activities of any sort within a broader history of terrorism. While acknowledging the evolution (hence variability) of terrorism over time, we identify a number of factors that make it challenging to describe any cyber-activity as ‘terrorist’. The paper’s third section posits three competing ways to deal with these challenges. The first is simply to abandon the concept of cyberterrorism as a misnomer. The second is to engage in further definitional work to clarify that to which cyberterrorism might refer. The third—our preferred route—is to eschew the question of definition altogether and approach cyberterrorism as a social construction rather than a stable and coherent ontological entity.