RT Book
T1 ‘Questions about Dawlah. DM me, plz.’ The Sock Puppet Problem in Online Terrorism Research
A1 Huey, Laura
A2 Kalyal, Hina
LA English
YR 2015
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1866147617
AB This paper explores the problem of deception in online terrorism research. While conducting research into the growing phenomenon of female migration to Islamic State-held territory by Western females, we began following a Twitter account exhibiting suspicious activity. The account owner – believed to be a Canadian teenage female – indicated interest in learning more about joining the IS. We tracked this account for three weeks in order to discover more information about its activities and thus to develop a set of key indicators that might help predict future migration risk. We subsequently learned it was a fake account (‘sock puppet’) established to fool IS recruiters. The operation of such ruses and the problems they create is discussed here