Introduction

The ten articles in this special issue were selected from those delivered at an international conference on terrorism and social media (#TASMConf) held at Swansea University, U.K., on 27–28 June 2017. Organized by Swansea University’s Cyberterrorism Project (www.cyberterrorism-project.org), the conference was attended by 145 delegates from fifteen countries across six continents. In addition to academic researchers, these delegates included representatives from a range of nonacademic stakeholders including Facebook, Tech Against Terrorism, law enforcement, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, the U.K.’s Home Office, the U.S. State Department, and the BBC. Six keynote presentations were delivered, videos of which are available free-to-access online.¹ The keynote speakers were Max Hill QC (the U.K.’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation), Dr. Erin Marie Saltman (Facebook Policy Manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa on Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism), Sir John Scarlett (former head of MI6), and Professors Maura Conway (Dublin City University), Philip Bobbitt (Columbia Law School), and Bruce Hoffman (Georgetown University). In addition, a total of fifty-three other speakers presented their research into terrorists’ use of social media and responses to this phenomenon. These speakers were drawn from a range of academic disciplines including law, criminology, psychology, security studies, politics, international relations, media and communication, history, war studies, English, linguistics, Islamic studies, and computer science. This emphasis on interdisciplinarity is evident in the articles in this special issue. A number of the speakers were also early career researchers or postgraduate research students; this emphasis on nurturing young researchers is also reflected in the contents of this special issue.