Cyberterrorism: A postmodern view of networks of terror and how computer security experts and law enforcement officials fight them.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cyberterrorists create networks in order to engage in malicious activities against the Internet and computers. The purpose of the study is also to understand how computer security labs (i.e., in universities) and various agencies (that is, law enforcement agencies such as police departments and the FBI) create joint networks in their fight against cyberterrorists. This idea of analyzing the social networks of two opposing sides rests on the premise that it takes networks to fight networks. The ultimate goal is to show that, because of the postmodern nature of the Internet, the fight between networks of cyberterrorists and networks of computer security experts (and law enforcement officials) is a postmodern fight. Two theories are used in this study: social network theory and game theory.This study employed qualitative methodology and data were collected via in-depth conversational (face-to-face) interviewing. Twenty-seven computer security experts and law enforcement officials were interviewed. Overall, this study found that cyberterrorists tend not to work alone. Rather, they team up with others through social networks. It was also found that it takes networks to fight networks. As such, it is necessary for experts and officials to combine efforts, through networking, in order to combat, let alone understand, cyberterrorist networks. Of equal relevance is the fact that law enforcement agents and computer security experts do not always engage in battle with cyberterrorists. They sometimes try to interact with them in order to obtain more information about their networks (and vice versa). Finally, four themes were identified from the participants' accounts: (1) postmodern state of chaos, (2) social engineering, (3) know thy enemy, and (4) the enemy of my enemy is my friend

What They Don’t Want You to Know About Planet X: Surviving 2012 and the Aesthetics of Conspiracy Rhetoric

Predictions of catastrophe at the end of the year 2012 are popular enough to be exploited by Hollywood and debunked by NASA. Drawing from a YouTube video series predicting a 2012 cataclysm caused by “Planet X,” we ask whether the discourse in question is a conspiracy theory and demonstrate how it exemplifies the challenges of analyzing rhetoric in the “paranoid style.” Examining these videos in terms of evidence, credibility, and inter-textuality, this article articulates an aesthetic of conspiracism, going beyond identifying the components of paranoid style to answer what makes a good conspiracy theory as such

Cross Connections: Online Activism, Real World Outcomes

This research paper examines the role of the Internet as it relates to the development of social movements and political protest in the ‘physical’ world. It also analyses the role of independent media and reporting methodologies used by activists and net-artists. The emergence of online activism and an emphasis on collaboration, information sharing and open source tools also had a significant impact on new media arts discussions and aesthetics. The refugee activist movement in Australia is a key case study in this thesis, as it is an excellent example of how activists have used the Internet and WWW to garner support within the community and to engage people to come to protests. In addition, activists at the protests have reported these events on the WWW and this subject has also had a resounding impact within the context of contemporary and media arts. The implications of identity online is a major factor in constructing the arguments in this thesis, as the relationship between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ space is explored in detail as it relates to personal identity and online community

Skyscraping Frontiers

As a space of extremes, the skyscraper has been continually constructed as an urban frontier in American cultural productions. Like its counterpart of the American wilderness, this vertical frontier serves as a privileged site for both subversion and excessive control. Beyond common metaphoric readings, this study models the skyscraper not only as a Foucauldian heterotopia, but also as a complex network of human and nonhuman actors while retracing its development from its initial assemblage during the 19th century to its steady evolution into a smart structure from the mid-20th century onward. It takes a close look at US-American literary and filmic fictions and the ways in which they sought to make sense of this extraordinary structure throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. More traditional poststructuralist spatial theories are connected with concepts and methods of Actor-Network Theory in a compelling account of the skyscraper’s evolution as reflected in fictional media from early 20th-century short stories via a range of action, disaster and horror films to selected city novels of the 1990s and 2000s

The politics of cyberconflict: ethnoreligious conflicts in computer mediated environments

This thesis argues that it is important to distinguish between two different phenomena in cyberpolitical spaces: First of all, between ethnic or religious groups fighting over in cyberspace, as they do in real life (Ethnoreligious cyberconflict) and second, between a social movement and its antagonistic institution (Sociopolitical cyberconflict). These different kinds of cyberconflict can be explained in the context of international conflict analysis for ethnoreligious cyberconflict and social movement theory for sociopolitical cyberconflict, while keeping in mind that this takes place in a media environment by using media theory. By combining elements of these approaches and justifying the link to cyberconflict, it is possible to use them as a theoretical light to look at the environment of Cyberconflict (CC) and analysis of incidents of CC. Consequently, this work looks at the leading groups using the internet either as weapon or a resource against governments, while also looking at networks, international organisations and new social movements. Searching for a satisfactory theoretical framework, I propose the following parameters to be looked at while analysing cyberconflicts: 1. Environment of Conflict and Conflict Mapping (real and virtual). The world system generates an arborescent apparatus, which is haunted by lines of flight, emerging through underground networks connected horizontally and lacking a hierarchic centre (Deleuze and Guattari). The structure of the internet is ideal for network groups, (a global network with no central authority) has offered another experience of governance (no governance), time and space (compression), ideology (freedom of information and access to it), identity (multiplicity) and fundamentally an opposition to surveillance and control, boundaries and apparatuses. 2. Sociopolitical Cyberconflicts: The impact of ICTs on: a. Mobilising structures (network style of movements using the internet, participation, recruitment, tactics, goals), b. Framing Processes (issues, strategy, identity, the effect of the internet on these processes), c. Political opportunity structure (the internet as a component of this structure), d. hacktivism. 3. Ethnoreligious Cyberconflicts: a. Ethnic/religious affiliation, chauvinism, national identity, b. Discourses of inclusion and exclusion, c. Information warfare, the use of the internet as a weapon, propaganda and mobilisational resource d. Conflict resolution depends on legal, organisational framework, number of parties issues, distribution of power, values and beliefs. 4. The internet as a medium: a. Analysing discourses (representations of the world, constructions of social identities and social relations), b. Control of information, level of censorship, alternative sources, c. Wolsfeld: Political contest model among antagonists: the ability to initiate and control events, dominate political discourse, mobilise supporters, d. Media effects on policy (strategic, tactical, and representational)

MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY: THE NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY TODAY

New media technologies have brought about radical changes in the contemporary mass communication landscape. An important aspect of these changes which is currently provoking much interest concerns how these technologies are redefining and disrupting the operations, ethos and tastes of the old media, thus challenging the future of the traditional media institution. The Nigerian newspaper industry, like others elsewhere, is caught up in this new reality as new media technologies and the attendant alternative news sources increasingly gain footing in the country. This study, therefore, examines how newspaper managers in Nigeria, to secure their future in the new dispensation, have been responding to these urgent challenges posed by new media technologies. The research is anchored within various theories: Technological Determinism (TD), Disruptive Technology (DT), Diffusion of Innovation and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and puts forward the “Techno-Human Dynamism” model, as it seeks answer to the main research question: What are the observable trends in the management of Nigerian newspapers at a time when new media technologies are posing a challenge to the survival of traditional newspapers? Adopting a mixed qualitative research approach - Key Informant Interview (KII) and Focus Group Discussion (FGD), the study focuses on four major Nigerian daily newspapers - The Sun, The Nation, The Daily Trust and The Daily Times - as well as the newspaper readers of these daily newspapers. Three managerial personnel of each of the selected newspapers were interviewed, while Focus Group Discussion (FGD) of four sessions comprising six discussants each were conducted among newspaper readers in each of four purposively selected cities - Aroma junction (Awka, Anambra), Ojota junction (Ikeja, Lagos), Sky Memorial junction (Wuse, Abuja) and Rumukoro junction (Port Harcourt, Rivers) - across the country. Employing the thematic method of data analysis, the study found that Nigerian newspapers, like their counterparts elsewhere, are already experiencing the disruptive impact of new media technologies in all major areas of their operations including content, human resources and revenue. These disruptive impacts appear to be strengthening rather than merely weakening the newspaper organisations. The newspapers in response to them have become more creative, more ethical - volatising factual, accurate, investigative and analytical reporting. These are issues that had hitherto posed huge ethical concerns about Nigerian journalism. Moreover, the hybridization (integration) of the new and old media as one of the coping strategies seems to add further strength to the newspapers as they poach on the strengths of the new media to complement the weaknesses of the old. However, the newspaper managers still have some latitude to secure the future of the industry given the untapped potential of the industry both in the traditional and online sense. The study recommended that Nigerian newspapers should endeavour to keep pace with the technological innovations driving today’s newspaper industry while boldly considering other response strategies that have worked elsewhere - including journalistic cooperatives, mergers and conglomeration - towards arresting the dwindling fortunes of the industry

Postmodernism And Networks Of Cyberterrorists

This article exemplifies the very notion that cyberterrorist networks are postmodern types of networks, where no leadership is needed, no center exists, and where communication is ultra-flexible and quasi-limitless. As opposed to conventional terrorist organizations, with their hierarchical structures that are vertically designed, cyberterrorist organizations are actually not organizations. They do not exhibit an intrinsically group or design nature. Rather, they are volatile and unexpected, a very postmodern attribute. The postmodern concept of hyperreal is described in this analysis. Hyperreal suggests a reality that supersedes the world. As such, cyberspace is the new public sphere and it is postmodern; it treasures the concept of the public while disengaging it from any particular time or place. As a result, the postmodern map of cyberspace becomes the totality itself, superseding the world. Hyperreal also implies that cyberspace enables the self to become fluid, a flow of identity that converges under the sign of the virtual environment. As such, this article purports itself to define postmodernism and to discuss its application to cyberspace with respect to (1) Baudrillard\u27s hyperreal/real continuum, (2) the fragmentation, fluidity, and decentralization of the self, (3) postmodernism and cyberterrorism, (4) the organizational challenges faced by cybersecurity and law enforcement agents, and (5) the absence of leadership in cyberterrorist networks

Postmodernism and Networks of Cyberterrorists

This article exemplifies the very notion that cyberterrorist networks are postmodern types of networks, where no leadership is needed, no center exists, and where communication is ultra-flexible and quasi-limitless. As opposed to conventional terrorist organizations, with their hierarchical structures that are vertically designed, cyberterrorist organizations are actually not organizations. They do not exhibit an intrinsically group or design nature. Rather, they are volatile and unexpected, a very postmodern attribute. The postmodern concept of hyperreal is described in this analysis. Hyperreal suggests a reality that supersedes the world. As such, cyberspace is the new public sphere and it is postmodern; it treasures the concept of the public while disengaging it from any particular time or place. As a result, the postmodern map of cyberspace becomes the totality itself, superseding the world. Hyperreal also implies that cyberspace enables the self to become fluid, a flow of identity that converges under the sign of the virtual environment. As such, this article purports itself to define postmodernism and to discuss its application to cyberspace with respect to (1) Baudrillard\u27s hyperreal/real continuum, (2) the fragmentation, fluidity, and decentralization of the self, (3) postmodernism and cyberterrorism, (4) the organizational challenges faced by cybersecurity and law enforcement agents, and (5) the absence of leadership in cyberterrorist networks

Cyberterrorism: Postmodern State Of Chaos

This paper examines cyberterrorism and its potential to create a postmodern state of chaos. In general, chaos refers to a state of extreme confusion and disorder. This analysis breaks new ground in that it describes chaos theory as a foundation for better understanding cyberterrorism and explains how chaos theory and game theory are tightly coupled. The author also contrasts modern, conventional terrorism with postmodern, innovative cyberterrorism. The main idea is that the postmodern state of chaos caused by cyberterrorist attacks differs dramatically from the destruction caused by conventional terrorist acts. This comparison serves as the basis for making the point that cyberterrorism is not three-dimensional, it is not analog (but it is digital), and it exposes actors of cyberspace to new concepts of time and space. Another important argument is that the postmodern state of chaos implies the danger of cascading failures brought forth by cyberterrorists. A cascading failure is a succession of failures (i.e., cascade) caused by the elimination of a crucial node (i.e., a point or location in an infrastructural system) from a network. This paper is groundbreaking in that it adds fresh, new insights on scholarly perceptions of cyberterrorism. While most of the literature on the subject is technical and political, this paper brings a philosophical outlook to the association between postmodernism and the evolving face of terrorism. This paper begins with a thorough description of cyberterrorism, which refers to attacks conducted against computers, networks, and systems. Of equal relevance is the distinction between cyberterrorism and simple hacking. This paper then proceeds to explain postmodernism, asserting that cyberspace needs to be framed in the context of hyperreal (the blurring of distinctions between the real in the unreal). What comes next is the heart of the paper: the postmodern state of chaos. This paper ends with a discussion that also includes suggestions for future research. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC