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Taking a New Perspective. Mapping the Al Qaeda Network through the Eyes of the UN Security Council
Stollenwerk, Eric; Dörfler, Thomas; Schibberges, Julian (2016): Taking a New Perspective. Mapping the Al Qaeda Network through the Eyes of the UN Security Council, in: Terrorism and Political Violence, London [u.a.]: Taylor & Francis Online, Jg. 28, Nr. 5, S. 950–970, doi: 10.1080/09546553.2014.987341.
Faculty/Chair:
Author:
Title of the Journal:
Terrorism and Political Violence
ISSN:
1556-1836
Publisher Information:
Year of publication:
2016
Volume:
28
Issue:
5
Pages:
Language:
English
Abstract:
Network analysis has attracted significant attention when researching the phenomenon of transnational terrorism, particularly Al Qaeda. While many scholars have made valuable contributions to mapping Al Qaeda, several problems remain due to a lack of data and the omission of data provided by international organizations such as the UN. Thus, this article applies a social network analysis and subsequent mappings of the data gleaned from the Security Council's consolidated sanctions list, and asks what they can demonstrate about the structure and organizational characteristics of Al Qaeda. The study maps the Al Qaeda network on a large scale using a newly compiled data set. The analysis reveals that the Al Qaeda network consists of several hundred individual and group nodes connecting almost all over the globe. Several major nodes are crucial for the network structure, while simultaneously many other nodes only weakly and foremost regionally connect to the network. The article concludes that the findings tie in well to the latest research pointing to local and simultaneously global elements of Al Qaeda, and that the new data is a valuable source for further analyses, potentially in combination with other data.
Keywords: ; ; ; ;
Al Qaeda
network
social network analysis
terrorism
UN
Type:
Article
Activation date:
June 30, 2015
Permalink
https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/21847