Mitchell Centre Seminar Series
| Dates: | 12 March 2025 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff |
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Michael Genkin. University of Manchester.
Understanding Self-Starter Terrorism: A Network Mobilization Perspective
Despite a steady increase of self-starter terrorist plots in the last 10 years, there is little understanding of what explains their incidence or affects their distribution. It is also not clear why plots are sometimes carried out by lone wolves such as the 2011 Norway attacker and at other times by small groups such as the 7/7 London bombers. To answer these questions we shift away from considering factors that produce radical or extremist opinions (radicalization) and the number of individuals who hold such opinions and focus on how such individuals are embedded in their social networks. This allows us to model mobilization into self-starter terrorism among existing radicals. We argue that mobilization depends not only on ties between the radicals but the manner in which the radicals are connected to the non-radicals. We call this network mobilization readiness (NMR), operationalizing it in precise quantitative measures and providing a typology of four mobilization scenarios that distinguish networks where the mobilization is complete or incomplete, and whether it involves groups or individuals. Next, we consider the kinds of ecological factors that alter NMR. To do so we develop an agent-based computational model that is partially validated empirically with a dataset of self-starter terrorism. The results show that a large amount of self-starter terrorism may be held back by ecological forces rather than a shortage of radicals. Particularly important in disrupting mobilization are neutral magnets, which are social venues that attract both radicals and non-radicals and re-wire their social connections. We show that the amount of self-starter terrorism may be more accurately explained by considering factors that affect NMR rather than factors that produce extremist attitudes. This suggests that large-scale survey-based studies on radicalization should ask questions that assess NMR-related variables if they wish to evaluate the potential for self-starter terrorism.
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G6
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
