How terrorists attract lone wolf attackers

Magazines of some of the world's most dreaded terrorist organisations are experimenting with strategies to increase motivation for lone wolf attacks, new research has found.

Inspire, an online magazine reportedly published by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is experimenting with using gamification (the use of gaming ideas such as levels of achievement and competition) strategies to attract lone-wolf attacks, the findings showed.

The study analysed the language used in two magazines to gain intelligence about terrorist strategy.

"The payoff from understanding how all this works is that intelligence and law enforcement analysts can get insight into what the 'bad guys' are doing from the speeches and documents that they produce, often for other purposes," said researcher David Skillicorn, a professor at the Queen's University in Canada

For the study, Skillicorn examined the language used in Inspire and the Islamic State News published by the Islamic State (IS).

"Jihadist language intensity has been steadily increasing over the past few issues of Inspire, after being much more stable during the Anwar al-Awlaki years," Skillicorn stressed.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a senior talent recruiter for Al Qaeda.

The intellectual level of these magazines is comparable to other mass market magazines - they aren't particularly simplistic and they assume a reasonably well educated readership, the study noted.

The findings appeared in the journal Security Informatics.