Name game behind labeling terrorist groups in Syria

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of terrorist groups' names on attracting a certain audience to join a specific terrorist group. The study tries to prove that there is a name game behind picking terrorist groups' names and hence it is a main reason in members' decision to follow the group. There is a number of cues present in the environment, which guide people to make their decisions about being members of a particular terrorist group. This study hypothesizes that one of these cues is the attractiveness of groups' names which were chosen in a deliberate way to affect some people. This study is made on thirty ex-members of different terrorist groups who were led into error and were deluded by the names of terrorists groups to be a member in the terrorists’project. These deluded ex-members found that what is called ' jihadist groups' were not more than terrorist groups and decided not to get dragged into the terrorists' project. The 30 ex-members are all Syrian citizens, educated, aged between 20 to 35 years old.