Abstract

This paper outlines the results of a two month study in which a series of extremist Islamist websites - registered, hosted or given datacentre services by Canadian internet companies- were empirically observed. The results of this project are inserted into a framework which explores the misuse and wrongful application of the "terrorist" signifier to substate or nonstate activities, discerns between the purported use of the internet by extremist Islamist organizations for destructive means and the real use of the internet by such groups, and suggests a number of conclusions based on prior administrative responses to the extremist Islamist use of the internet. The full results of this project can he viewed at http://www.stonnloader.com/metnbers/nordicfury.

Highlights

  • Spurred on by the phenomenal proliferation ofNICT.s 1 at the close of the twentieth century and given wind by our progression into a global, networked economy in which some believe the primary resource will be information (Toffler, 1970, Nasbitt, 1982, Negroponte, 1995), a considerable redistribution of authority has seen non-traditional stakeholders - namely substate and non-state actors - rising to challenge the dmninance previously enjoyed over the information environn1ent by state and corporate actors (Leistyna, 2005)

  • This challenge has resulted in the tipping of the ''political balance away from the state and toward activists.. (Perry & Sindayen, 2001 ), and has led some to posit the infonnation enviromnent as a pri1nary site of struggle wherein state and non state actors will battle ulti1nately - for control over the right to 1nanage public perception of international events (Zanini, in Jones, 2004)

  • Developed in 1969 as the ARPANET - a U.S Depart1nent of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) initiative - and fonnally opened to civilian and c01n1nercial interests in 1985, the internet first cmne into wide-scale use by the general public after the invention of the World Wide Web by Ti1n Berners-Lee in 1990 (Galloway, 2004, Naughton, 2002). '"In less than ten years,~' the internet became "indispensable to Inany people in their daily lives'' (Hoffman et al, 2004, p. 37) and is viewed by some as a precondition for the functionality of affairs in the Western world

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Summary

Introduction

The arrival of the ·infonnation age· has witnessed a significant restructuring of control over the n1anagen1ent of transnational information flows. Spurred on by the phenomenal proliferation ofNICT.s 1 at the close of the twentieth century and given wind by our progression into a global, networked economy in which some believe the primary resource will be information (Toffler, 1970, Nasbitt, 1982, Negroponte, 1995), a considerable redistribution of authority has seen non-traditional stakeholders - namely substate and non-state actors - rising to challenge the dmninance previously enjoyed over the information environn1ent by state and corporate actors (Leistyna, 2005). This challenge has resulted in the tipping of the ''political balance away from the state and toward activists.. With a 2006 estimate putting the total number of world internet users at 694

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