Understanding the Community's Perceptions Towards Online Radicalisation: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the community’s perceptions towards detecting signs of online radicalisation and examine whether different community members would exhibit different levels of understanding. A 57-item survey was administered to 160 undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and 160 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers. Based on the ratings of the 42 online radicalisation indicators identified by Neo (2020), two-factor analyses were separately conducted using oblique rotation to undercover a four-factor structure for the NTU sample and a three-factor solution for the MTurk sample. The results revealed valuable insights into how community members would identify terrorist threats. Furthermore, the survey revealed differences in the participants’ views on the role of the internet in radicalisation pathways and their perceptions regarding various counter-terrorism strategies. Together, the findings would contribute to the discussion of how law enforcement could better engage and work together with the community members to detect terrorist threats.