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Within a fairly short amount of time, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has managed to put large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq under their control. To many observers, the sheer speed at which this "state" was established was…
We present a large longitudinal dataset of tweets from two sets of users that are suspected to be affiliated with ISIS. These sets of users are identified based on a prior study and a campaign aimed at shutting down ISIS Twitter accounts.…
Recent terrorist attacks carried out on behalf of ISIS on American and European soil by lone wolf attackers or sleeper cells remind us of the importance of understanding the dynamics of radicalization mediated by social media communication…
We study the spatiotemporal correlation of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda, ISIS, and local insurgents, in six geographical areas identified via $k$-means clustering applied to the Global Terrorism Database. All surveyed organizations exhibit…
Who joins extremist movements? Answering this question poses considerable methodological challenges. Survey techniques are infeasible and selective samples provide no counterfactual. Recruits can be assigned to contextual units, but this is…
We analyze 26.2 million comments published in Arabic language on Twitter, from July 2014 to January 2015, when ISIS' strength reached its peak and the group was prominently expanding the territorial area under its control. By doing that, we…
Using a dataset of over 1.9 million messages posted on Twitter by about 25,000 ISIS members, we explore how ISIS makes use of social media to spread its propaganda and to recruit militants from the Arab world and across the globe. By…
The ease of use of the Internet has enabled violent extremists such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to easily reach large audience, build personal relationships and increase recruitment. Social media are primarily based on the…
Society faces a fundamental global problem of understanding which individuals are currently developing strong support for some extremist entity such as ISIS (Islamic State) -- even if they never end up doing anything in the real world. The…
On October 20, 2016, Daesh (Islamic State) set fire to the sulphur production site Al-Mishraq as the battle of Mosul in northern Iraq became more intense. An extensive plume of toxic sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide caused…
This article examines the structure and spatial patterns of violent political organizations in the Sahel-Sahara, a region characterized by growing political instability over the last 20 years. Drawing on a public collection of disaggregated…
Data science has been satisfactorily used to discover social issues in several parts of the world. However, there is a lack of governmental open data to discover those issues in countries such as Iraq. This situation arises the following…
Though many aggregation theories exist for physical, chemical and biological systems, they do not account for the significant heterogeneity found, for example, in populations of living objects. This is unfortunate since understanding how…
Many causal processes have spatial and temporal dimensions. Yet the classic causal inference framework is not directly applicable when the treatment and outcome variables are generated by spatio-temporal point processes. We extend the…
The confluence of technological and societal advances is changing the nature of global terrorism. For example, engagement with Web, social media, and smart devices has the potential to affect the mental behavior of the individuals and…
Capturing dynamics of operational similarity among terrorist groups is critical to provide actionable insights for counter-terrorism and intelligence monitoring. Yet, in spite of its theoretical and practical relevance, research addressing…
Online propaganda is central to the recruitment strategies of extremist groups and in recent years these efforts have increasingly extended to women. To investigate ISIS' approach to targeting women in their online propaganda and uncover…
Information Forensics and Security (IFS) is an active R&D area whose goal is to ensure that people use devices, data, and intellectual properties for authorized purposes and to facilitate the gathering of solid evidence to hold perpetrators…
Complex systems research is becomingly increasingly data-driven, particularly in the social and biological domains. Many of the systems from which sample data are collected feature structural heterogeneity at the mesoscopic scale (i.e.…
The rapid spread of radical ideologies in recent years has led to a worldwide string of terrorist attacks. Understanding how extremist tendencies germinate, develop, and drive individuals to action is important from a cultural standpoint,…