The fear of terrorists using digital networks has now hit the social gaming world.
[C]ould the humble MMO be harbouring nefarious groups hell-bent on doing Evil to Western Civilisation? Could a terrorist actually be the person behind my so-called friend the Furry? Is s/he/it trying to draw me over to the dark side? What about all those cabals I'm not friendly with in my online games? Could they actually be groups of terrorists plotting against all that is Great and Good?...
That very good post touches on using virtual worlds sociology to study terrorist group behavior, the question of monitoring certain groups for offline violence, and MUVEs for terror training.
The terrorist information warfare meme has been going on for a while, now. Here's Rumsfeld, for example, worrying about it. There's the web-jihadi version. And they were into Web video before Google bought YouTube.
NB: the title of this post uses the phrase e-Qaeda, which is drawn from a 2005 Washington Post article. I also like the term iJihad, but it hasn't caught on. Sometimes Mac-baiting doesn't pay off.
(via social sim)
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