Abstract
The Internet plays an important role in the continued functioning of extremist and terrorist groups. Studying extremist ideology based on linguistic analysis using methods of corpus and computer linguistics to help supplement and make qualitative analysis more objective is crucial. However, corpus-based linguistic research into the ideology of extremists remains scarce. This is due to a limited access to such texts. The Dark Web Project of the University of Arizona AI Lab that contains gigabytes of texts of private extremist and terrorist forums is a valuable source for corpus-based studies of extremist discourse. The aim of the research is a corpus-based study of Russian-language posts of Caucasian extremists from KavkazChat forum (included on the RF Federal list of extremist materials) where The 2010 Moscow Metro bombings are discussed. WordSmith Tools software package was used to identify most frequent words and word clusters, build concordances, find collocates, etc. A comparative corpus analysis of texts by Islamic extremists and those by common Internet users on the same topic (comments on relevant newsfeeds) allowed us to identify a number of features of Islamic extremist rhetoric.
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Notes
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KavkazChat Forum Dataset. University of Arizona Artificial Intelligence Lab. Retrieved on February 20, 2018, from within https://www.azsecure-data.org/dark-web-forums.html.
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Russia braces for terrorism’s return as 38 die in subway bombings. Washington Post Foreign Service, March 30, 2010. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 29, 2018 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032900007_pf.html?tid=a_mcntx.
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Deadliest terrorist attacks on Russia’s transportation systems in recent years. Retrieved on March 29, 2018 from https://www.rt.com/news/383323-terrorist-attacks-russia-transport/.
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Chechen Rebel Leader Umarov Claims Moscow Metro Blasts. Retrieved on March 31, 2018, from https://www.rferl.org/a/Umarov_On_Video_Says_He_Ordered_Moscow_Attacks/1999257.html.
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New Environment of Social Discourse: City Internet-Newspaper (on the Example of the Village). Retrieved on March 29, 2018 from http://discourseanalysis.org/ada15/st102.shtml [in Russian].
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Federation Council included Radio Svoboda and CNN to the list of foreign agents, retrieved on March 29, 2018 from https://www.rbc.ru/politics/17/10/2017/59e5e4829a794799d3e26b94 [in Russian].
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Acknowledgments
Funding of the project “Speech portrait of the extremist: corpus-statistical research (on the material of the extremist forum “KavkazChat”)” from RF President’s grants for young scientists (No. MК-5718.2018.6) for T.L. is gratefully acknowledged.
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Litvinova, T., Litvinova, O., Panicheva, P., Biryukova, E. (2018). Using Corpus Linguistics Tools to Analyze a Russian-Language Islamic Extremist Forum. In: Bodrunova, S. (eds) Internet Science. INSCI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11193. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01437-7_5
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