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Documenting the Virtual Caliphates

Speaker(s):
Mia Bloom
Date of Event:
July 27, 2018
Associated SMA Project
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Speaker: Bloom, M. (Georgia State University)

Date: 27 July 2018

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Mia Bloom (Georgia State University) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series. Dr. Bloom spoke about her Minerva-funded research, which examines the themes that emerge in ISIS propaganda, the types of propaganda that are distributed, the mediums in which ISIS members communicate with one another, and the methods in which tactical innovations of actions on the battlefield are promoted within ISIS. She explained that ISIS’s primary methods of communication are via telegrams and online chatrooms. She and her team managed to infiltrate these groups to conduct their research, collecting 18,000 pieces of propaganda for their analysis. She discussed threats that were detected, reported, and prevented as a result of ISIS chatroom infiltration, as well as the types of materials collected (i.e., school books, manuals on how to build explosives, propagandistic materials targeted towards specific audiences, etc.) and what themes were identified in these materials. Dr. Bloom concluded her presentation by outlining areas for further research.

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Mia Bloom is Professor of Communication at Georgia State University. She conducts ethnographic field research in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia and speaks eight languages. She has authored several books and articles on terrorism and violent extremism including Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (2005), Living Together After Ethnic Killing [with Roy Licklider] (2007) and Bombshell: Women and Terror (2011). She is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held research or teaching appointments at Princeton, Cornell, Harvard and McGill Universities.

Under the auspices of the Minerva Research Initiative (MRI) of Department of Defense, Bloom is currently conducting research on how children become involved in terrorist organizations. Bloom’s findings will be published in a book for Cornell University Press entitled Small Arms: Children and Terror (2019). Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, a Masters in Arab Studies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Bachelors degree from McGill University in Russian, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

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NSI Contributors
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Region
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Methodology
Social Network Analysis
National Security Topic
Terrorism
Outcome

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