ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a context against which the reader can better frame that coverage and a brief summary of the historical and conceptual development of terrorism recruitment trends and radicalization models as they have developed over the 20th and into the 21st centuries. It focuses on the essential context to online recruitment and radicalization efforts. The chapter presents the recruitment and radicalization process in both its traditional and contemporary forms, some of the Al Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant messaging within that process and briefly some ideas on countering that messaging to further limit successful recruitment and radicalization in the West. The traditional model has adapted to a new form, with self and small-group largely autonomous recruitment, and a guided radicalization process. Online recruitment of young, Western women has proven to be anything but a fleeting phenomenon. Traditional mobilization to violence was based on common environmental conditions that adversely affected an identifiable class or group.
