Terrorism Research Opportunity

There are several research opportunities for students who are interested in terrorism with at least a 3.0 GPA. The duties required for the positions include using a linguistic analysis program to analyze terrorist propaganda video transcripts.

The nature of the project as a whole is analysis of several hundred terrorist propaganda videos. The library of videos is owned by the International Center for Terrorism and Political Violence, located in Singapore, and is comprised of nearly 1500 videos produced by many different terrorist organizations. One aspect of the project will be somewhat descriptive in that we hope to learn: 1) who the target audience is (e.g. children, adults, possible recruits, ‘the enemy’), 2) what the message of the video is (e.g. to defend the prophet, to prevent future grievances, to promote jihad, etc.), 3) if the target audience, the message, or the frequency of these tapes have a discernable pattern, and 4) if these patterns change over time. Another aspect of this project includes analyzing the rhetoric and persuasion techniques used in the videos and testing the same messages in the laboratory with student populations, both in the US and abroad.

If interested, please send your CV/resume and unofficial transcript to Lauren Boyatzi at lminacap@umd.edu ASAP.