Extreme Groups and the Militarization of Social Media

Abstract

The qualitative research in this chapter serves as a supplement and support of the theoretical discourse analysis. It provides a dataset of the most prominent religious clerics in the Middle East and their influence on religious extremist; identifying the names of a hundred and thirty six (136) of the most active Salafi and Salafi Jihadi clerics on social media. The results indicate that there is hardly any difference between how a Salafi or a Jihadi group conduct their propaganda campaigns. Another noticeable result is that both groups use demographic segmentation to specifically target sub-groups, such as women and kids. This chapter concludes that, apart from few negligible differences, both Salafi and jihadi groups are ideologically aligned.