Networking vehement frames: neo-Nazi and violent jihadi demagoguery

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of violent extremist propaganda. Frame analysis and network text analysis (NTA) are used to advance our understanding of how diagnostic frames function within violent extremist propaganda. Neo-Nazi and violent jihadi demagogues use diagnostic frames to identify grievances in order to leverage individual and collective attitudes. More specifically, diagnostic frames assist in attitude formation through manufacturing subcultural identities and social boundaries that resonate within a target population. A comparative research design is used because of the differences and similarities that exist between neo-Nazi and violent jihadi propaganda. Analysis is based on the NTA, which generates neo-Nazi and violent jihadi ego networks. Results suggest that the process of generating subcultural identities and social boundaries is not unique among ideologies or groups despite differences in language, culture, history, and geography. Importantly, ego networks illustrate how demagogues frame societal problems from a subcultural perspective in order to mobilize target audiences.

Keywords:

• neo-Nazism
• violent jihadism
• propaganda
• network text analysis
• diagnostic frames
• ego networks

Funding

This work was supported by the 2013 Norwich University Board of Fellows Prize.

Notes on contributor

Travis Morris is an Assistant Professor in the School of Justice Studies and Sociology at Norwich University. In addition to terrorism, his research interests include comparative criminal justice systems and propaganda analysis. He has also conducted ethnographic work in Yemen and Israel.

Notes

1. The threat remains that neo-Nazi propaganda has the potential to incite emotions leading to a systematic increase in killings, bombings, and guerilla warfare by lone wolves (individual actors) and small cells (Simi & Futrell, 2010). In 2010, Abraham Cooper, also of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, reported that the number of hate and terrorist websites that now included social network pages, chat rooms, and micro bloggers was 11,500 (Lohr, 2010). These figures are supplemented by the spring 2010 report from the Southern Poverty Law Centers indicating a 54% rise of hate groups between 2000 and 2008. The same report identified that almost 1000 hate groups existed in 2009.

2. Terrorism as a tactic incorporates violence by word and deed as a symbolic medium to bring about active or passive alignment in a target audience.

3. Frames provide meaning to events or occurrences that are organized in a particular fashion intended to guide action (Benford & Snow, 2000; Klandermans, 1997; McAdam, 1982; Snow & Byrd, 2007; Tilly, 1978).

4. Framing impacts individual and group attitudes. McAdam's (1986) expansion of Snow, Zurcher, and Sheldon's (1980) micromobilization model of social movements outlines the significance of attitude formation and its link to social ties. He emphasizes the relationship between receptive attitudes and social ties. Receptive attitudes are a prerequisite for responding favorably to existing social ties. They also function as a motive to seek out relationships with others to establish new social ties. In this way, frames impact receptive attitudes or function to reinforce existing attitudes and social ties, audiences with guidelines for ideas, interpretations, and definitions.

5. The sample spans from the 1960s until 2009.

6. www.tawhed.ws, retrieved 19 January 2011.

7. http://wn-pdfs.tk/, retrieved 18 January 2011.

8. Automap and ORA are the software packages used for this research. Automap, a semi-automated natural language processing software developed by computational analysis for social and organizational systems, assists researchers in cleaning text data and generating semantic networks (Diesner & Carley, 2005). This software was selected because it can process large-scale textual data, and because it can convert raw text into a semantic network that can be cross-indexed and analyzed with other software packages (Carley, 2006; Diesner & Carley, 2005). Automap is intended to be used with ORA or another software package to enable network visualization and analysis. This research uses ORA for visualization and analysis.

ORA was initially designed as a network analysis tool to detect risks in an organizational design structure. ORA use has evolved into having various applications because of its ability to examine over 100 measures in meta-matrixes and semantic networks. ORA's input and output requirements are organized according to which measure is queried. The reports are formatted and viewable in log files, on screen, and other formats that can be operated by other network analysis software programs. ORA also consists of graphical software for visualizing and editing meta-matrix and semantic data. Data networks can be visualized into network structures and analytical reports can be queried from these networks. ORA also has a Java interface and a C++ computational backend (Carley & Reminga, 2004).

9. Snow and Benford (1988) outlined that framing tasks are prerequisites for mobilization. They defined mobilization as the intention to catalyze potential ideological adherents, increase support from a neutral audience, and deflate counter frames. Zuo and Benford (1995) assert that when diagnostic frames are more believable, the frames are more likely to resonate with a target audience and therefore increase the possibility of mobilization.

10. This outcome is framed by the demagogue as members of the white race that do not accept racial superiority and are apologetic for racial superiority policies of the past/present.