ABSTRACT The proliferation of Internet Communication Technologies (ICT) has prompted scholarly interest in the role of ICT in facilitating ideologically motivated hacking, particularly in the domains of cyberterrorism and hacktivism. This study uses bibliometric analysis to map out the scholarly landscape of the field, identifying key trends, influential authors, and major thematic areas. The study utilized a detailed systematic search of several scholarly databases to identify 126 peer-reviewed publications in several academic disciplines among 562 publications related to cyberterrorism and hacktivism over a two-decade period (2000–2020). The main findings identified that (1) despite being a transnational phenomenon, much of the research output is male-dominated and confined to the global north, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom; (2) there is an array of multidisciplinary contributions, with strong contributions from both the social sciences and the computer sciences, but is limited due to collaborative research barriers; and (3) key themes identified that both phenomenon share common “tactical methodologies,” but varies such as hacktivism researches focus toward sociological and ideological motivations, in comparison to cyberterrorism research focusing more closely toward the potential or similarly debated risk and scale of a cyberterrorist attack.
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