Title
New Online Ecology Of Adversarial Aggregates: Isis And Beyond
Abstract
Support for an extremist entity such as Islamic State (ISIS) somehow manages to survive globally online despite considerable external pressure and may ultimately inspire acts by individuals having no history of extremism, membership in a terrorist faction, or direct links to leadership. Examining longitudinal records of online activity, we uncovered an ecology evolving on a daily time scale that drives online support, and we provide a mathematical theory that describes it. The ecology features self-organized aggregates (ad hoc groups formed via linkage to a Facebook page or analog) that proliferate preceding the onset of recent real-world campaigns and adopt novel adaptive mechanisms to enhance their survival. One of the predictions is that development of large, potentially potent pro-ISIS aggregates can be thwarted by targeting smaller ones.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1126/science.aaf0675
SCIENCE
Field
DocType
Volume
Ecology,Social media,Terrorism,Accident prevention,Adversarial system
Journal
352
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
6292
0036-8075
11
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.08
4
11
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Neil F. Johnson135253.70
M. Zheng2111.08
Y. Vorobyeva3111.42
A. Gabriel4111.08
Hong Qi5152.47
Nicolas Velasquez6141.77
Pedro D. Manrique7121.79
David H. Johnson8122.17
E. Restrepo9111.08
Chaoming Song1058023.58
Stefan Wuchty11958.44