About Article

In 2017, also in a special issue of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, this one titled “Terrorist Online Propaganda and Radicalization,” 1 one of the coeditors of this issue, Conway, made six suggestions for progressing research on the role of the Internet in violent extremism and terrorism.2 These were to (1) widen the range of types of online violent extremism and terrorism being studied beyond violent jihadis, especially the socalled Islamic State (IS); (2) compare, not just across ideologies, but also groups, countries, languages and social media platforms; (3) deepen analyses to include interviewing and virtual ethnographic approaches; (4) up-scale or improve our capacity to undertake “big data” collection and analysis; (5) outreach beyond terrorism studies to become acquainted with, in particular, the Internet Studies literature and engage in interdisciplinary research with, for example, computer scientists; and (6) pay more attention to gender as a factor in online extremism and terrorism. If Conway’s call was to be summed up in a single word, however, it is probably “widening.” In her 2017 article she emphasizes in her first suggestion the widening of research on the role of the Internet in extremism and terrorism beyond a narrow focus on violent jihadi online content and interactions, especially that of IS, but in effect her additional suggestions to compare, deepen, upscale, outreach, and pay closer attention to gender are all requests to widen our efforts in different directions. This special issue seeks to showcase research that widens the research base yet further, with all the articles not only implicitly or explicitly taking up Conway’s suggestions, but also going beyond them.