Having recently returned from a brief (four-day!) trip to Indonesia and Singapore, I’ve been reminded of the value of simply being in a location with eyes and ears open in order to gain insight into current events. While in Indonesia, some interesting communication- and terrorism-related news emerged.
Facebook has been gaining ground in Indonesia, and in [...]

by Jeff Halverson
In the war of ideas for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world, cultural diplomacy can go a long way. The US government may not be very popular abroad, but our cultural products certainly are. Many Muslims hate our policies, but they still love our movies, listen to our pop music, and [...]

by Mark Woodward*
The terminology used in English and other European languages to discuss Islam, and especially Muslim political movements, shifts constantly. There is a general consensus, shared by many in the Muslim world, that “radical” and “extremist” are appropriately characterize individuals and movements that advocate and/or employ violence to accomplish their political ends.
Beyond this the [...]

by Steven R. Corman
I ran across an interesting research article in the most recent issue of the Journal of Communication entitled “‘Carrying online participation offline’–Mobilization by radical online groups and politically dissimilar offline ties.”*
The study looks at neo-Nazis and radical environmentalists (NN/RE) in the West, but because it potentially sheds some light on similar practices [...]

by Bud Goodall
One of the important challenges of President Obama’s administration is to sell the continuation of our “overseas contingency operation” (or perhaps FATAVE) in Afghanistan to an increasingly disenchanted audience at home and abroad. But there is a worrisome absence of a good narrative–a coherent collection of stories–about why we are there and what [...]

by Chris Lundry
Dwarfed by the stories of the earthquake tragedy in Padang, yesterday Indonesian media picked up a sensational statement issued at the Jakarta police headquarters. According to police spokesman Nanan Sukarna, police investigators have discovered evidence that the corpse of Jemaah Islamiyah’s Noordin Top showed signs of anal trauma consistent with sodomy, leading to speculation that he [...]

by Chris Lundry
Before last week’s bombings, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, completed a presidential election.  Similar to the 2004 election (which I monitored with the Carter Center), there was the requisite hand wringing in the Western media about the influence of Islamist parties such as the Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS) and the National Mandate [...]

by Monika Maslikowski & Z.S. Justus
As observers of Al-Qa’ida’s media strategy we notice a trend in their communication: When a conflict around the world involving a Muslim country heats ups, AQ leadership is quick to jump on the opportunity to provide analysis, encouragement, or criticism for the actions of players on the ground.
In the [...]

By Pauline Hope Cheong
Two related white papers have generated fresh buzz about Internet radicalization in recent weeks.  These papers are in substantial disagreement about the basic issue of how much of a force the Internet is in causing radicalization.  This is a sign that the process is not yet well-enough understood, and that we need [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Apparently one minute after Barack Obama was sworn in as President, the switch was flipped on a new whitehouse.gov website.  One interesting new feature is a blog that launched with five posts.
One of those is entitled Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov and it explains that their new media efforts will center on [...]