Leveraging the Terrorist – Audience Relationship to Assess Evolutionary Trajectories
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: TERRORISM’S COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMIC: LEVERAGING THE TERRORIST – AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP TO ASSESS EVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORIES. Daniel S. Gressang IV, PhD, 2009 Directed By: Professor David Lalman, Department of Government and Politics Terrorist groups do not operate in isolation. To survive in the face of counter- pressures from their opponents, the group must establish a beneficial relationship with a targeted audience, a presumed constituency, in order to generate the sympathy and support necessary for maintaining operational viability. Existing studies of terrorism, however, offer few insights into how this might be done. The most common approach revolves around assessments of terrorist messages, yet typically treats those messages as self-serving propaganda or media manipulation. This study takes a different approach, suggesting that terrorists use statements and communiqués in an effort to gain and maintain a supportive audience. Further, the intended audience for the messages infer meaning in terrorist violence, thus augmenting or reducing the impact of persuasive messaging by the terrorist. Understanding this process, in turn, may yield new insights into the dynamic processes of terrorism, offering new opportunities to assess a terrorist group’s potential for positive evolutionary growth or greater relative fitness. Using Grunig’s situational theory of publics, this study creates and evaluates a new metric, called expected affinity, for examining the terrorist group’s effort to establish and strengthen bonds between itself and its targeted and presumptively supportive audience. Expected affinity combines sub-measures addressing problem recognition, expected and desired levels of involvement, and constraint recognition, coupled with an inferred meaning in the symbolism of violent acts in order to evaluate terrorist messages and attacks. The results suggest utility in the expected affinity metric and point to opportunities for making the measure more directly applicable to specific cases through incorporation of detailed case study data. TERRORISM’S COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMIC: LEVERAGING THE TERRORIST – AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP TO ASSESS EVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORIES. By Daniel Seidel Gressang IV Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Advisory Committee: Professor David Lalman, Chair Professor Warren Phillips Professor George Quester Professor Fred Alford Professor Deborah Cai © Copyright by Daniel Seidel Gressang IV 2009 Acknowledgements This work was long in the making, and carries with it more work yet to be done in building a generalizable and effective metric. I am grateful for the encouragement, patience, endless questions, and valuable suggestions of my committee: Professors David Lalman, Warren Phillips, George Quester, Fred Alford, and Deborah Cai. Their constant encouragement has been exceptional. Aside from his committee responsibilities, David Lalman has continuously prompted better work from me through an endless series of questions, some I sometimes wonder if I have still managed to answer adequately. Drs. Martin Heisler and Mark Kauppi were also invaluable in helping me shape the initial ideas for this dissertation, and for that assistance I remain grateful. Above all others, I am eternally grateful for the encouragement and support of my family. Without their understanding and patience, this work would have never been brought to fruition. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................. vii Chapter1: At an Impasse ................................................................................................1 The Dilemma, 7 Maximizing Robustness in the Face of an Ill-Defined Future, 17 Resolving the Dilemma, 19 Chapter 2: Interpretations of Terrorism: A Literature Review ....................................20 Evolutionary Literature, 24 The Nature of Terrorism, 27 Terrorism as a Dynamical System, 35 A History of Miscommunications, 46 Terrorist Communications as Violent Propaganda, 50 Terrorist Communications as Media Manipulation, 53 Terrorist Communications as Structural and Environmental Manipulation, 57 Terrorist Communications as Rationalization and Justification, 61 Terrorist Communications as a Window on Mind and Moods, 63 Finding the Gaps, 65 Chapter 3: Building a Network-Based Affinity Model ................................................72 Modeling Dynamic Systems, 74 Applying Systems and Network Theories, 76 The Real Terrorist Network, 81 A Network Model of Terrorism, 84 The Evolutionary Curve, 90 Shifting Perceptions, 98 Chapter 4: Operationalizing Models ..........................................................................100 Defining Expected Link Affinity, 104 Calculating the Message Factors, 111 Problem Recognition, 112 Level of Involvement, 115 Constraint Recognition, 116 Rhetorical Constraint Recognition, 117 Embellishment, 118 Constraint Recognition Calculation, 119 ii Symbolic Orientation, 120 Methodological Strategy, 127 Visual Analytics Applications, 132 The Cases: Hamas, the RAF, and the SLA, 135 Data and Data Collection, 137 Chapter 5: Establishing a Foundation for Expected Affinity .....................................140 Searching for the Predictive Model, 142 Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawamat al-Islamiyyah), 144 Red Army Faction, 146 Symbionese Liberation Army, 150 Parsing the Texts, 152 Message Tones, 156 Link Specific Assessments, 160 Problem Recognition, 160 Level of Involvement, 169 Constraint Recognition, 174 A Situational Perspective, 180 A Valid Comparison?, 183 Other Considerations, 190 Chapter 6: Expanding the Metric ...............................................................................192 Symbolic Orientation, 196 Severity, Intimacy, and Weapon Selection, 197 Location, 199 Empathy, 199 Measuring Symbolic Orientation, 200 Attack Frequencies and Symbolic Orientation, 201 Attack Frequencies, Hamas, 201 Symbolic Orientation, Hamas, 204 Attack Frequencies, Red Army Faction, 206 Symbolic Orientation, Red Army Faction, 209 Attack Frequencies, Symbionese Liberation Army, 210 Symbolic Orientation, Symbionese Liberation Army, 212 Expected Affinity, 213 Hamas Expected Affinity, 214 Red Army Faction Expected Affinity, 221 Symbionese Liberation Army Expected Affinity, 230 Expected Affinity Metric Redux, 239 Chapter 7: Assessing Expected affinity's Utility .......................................................243 The Way Ahead, 246 Avenues for Environmental Exploration, 248 iii Causal Multiplicity, 248 Agency, 249 Media, 250 Proximity, 251 Audience Heterogeneity, 252 Future Refinements to Expected Affinity, 253 Content Categories, 253 Action Coding, 255 Non-Violent Acts, 256 A Fuzzy Future, 256 Appendix: Statements and Communiqués Used in Content Analysis .......................260 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................270 iv List of Tables Table 1: Analysis of Variance, Hamas Expected Affinity .........................................220 Table 2: Analysis of Variance, RAF Expected Affinity ............................................229 Table 3: Analysis of Variance, SLA Expected Affinity ............................................237 v List of Figures Figure 1: Network Model of Terrorism: Hypothetical Evolutionary Progression .......86 Figure 2: Hypothetical Evolutionary Curve .................................................................91 Figure 3: Hamas Message Tone Over Time ..............................................................157 Figure 4: Red Army Faction Message Tone Over Time ............................................158 Figure 5: Symbionese Liberation Army Message Tone Over Time ..........................158 Figure 6a: Hamas Problem Recognition Over Time ..................................................162 Figure 6b: Hamas Message Abstraction and Restraint Over Time ............................163 Figure 7a: RAF Problem Recognition Over Time .....................................................164 Figure 7b: RAF Message Abstraction and Restraint Over Time ...............................167 Figure 8a: SLA Problem Recognition Over Time .....................................................168 Figure 8b: SLA Message Abstraction and Restraint Over Time ...............................168 Figure 9a: Hamas Level of Involvement Messaging Over Time ...............................170 Figure 9b: Hamas Message Morality and Social Behavior References Over Time ..171 Figure 10a: RAF Level of Involvement Messaging Over Time ................................171 Figure 10b: RAF Message Morality and Social Behavior References Over Time....172 Figure 11a: SLA Level of Involvement Messaging Over Time ................................173 Figure 11b: SLA Message Morality and Social Behavior References Over Time ....174 Figure 12a: Hamas Constraint Recognition Messaging Over Time ..........................176 Figure 12b: Hamas Message Passivity and