Talk:Stochastic terrorism

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I wanted to make a significant change that may go against an accepted concept[edit]

I would like to make a significant change which may be against an accepted idea so I thought it should be put up for discussion. This section appears to be a misinterpretation of the meaning of an article. The article by Gordon Woo is in my not humble opinion poorly written and edited. I am not providing a link to the article because I am using an unofficial copy. Anyway you know how to find it.

Terminology[edit]

The term was initially used to suggest that a quantifiable relationship may exist between seemingly random acts of terror and their intended goal of "perpetuating a reign of fear" via a manipulation of mass media and its capacity for "instant global news communication". For example, careful timing and placement of just a few moderately explosive devices could have the same intended effect as numerous random attacks or the use of more powerful explosives if they were shrewdly devised to elicit the maximum response from media organizations. It was theorized by Gordon Woo in a 2002 paper that "the absolute number of attacks within a year, i.e. the rhythm of terror, might ultimately be determined as much by publicity goals and the political anniversary calendar as by the size of the terrorist ranks".[1]


I want to replace it with this: (which is a truer interpretation of what was said in the article. Note the heading change also).

References

  1. ^ WOO, GORDON (2002-04-01). "Quantitative Terrorism Risk Assessment". The Journal of Risk Finance. 4 (1): 7–14. doi:10.1108/eb022949. ISSN 1526-5943.

Anti-White Racism?[edit]

Does the definition of Stochastic Terrorism include the use of anti-white racism by the mass-media as part of the "demonization"? Seems to me that it's not just the speech, but the size of the "megaphone" that defines the term, since the larger the audience, the greater the statistical pool, and the more likely that the demonizing speech will result in stastically definable violence. Therefore it also seems to me that the mass media oulets should be the first place to look for it.2600:1702:5210:EEC0:6139:A95:85D1:54D3 (talk) 16:59, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stochastic terrorism from the bible belt[edit]

There's a group of partisan pastors in the bible belt that preach spiritual warfare to their congregations. The Bible is used to justify the same conspiracies that QAnon popularized which turns citizens against one another & the Democratic politicians in the government. This movement, led by Michael Flynn, is called "The Reawaken America Tour" & it involves a class of pastors that blend scripture with politics to promote QAnon conspiracy theories. What started as a small Church in Tennessee of 200 parishioners grew dramatically in 2020 when Pastor Greg Locke took to the internet and began pushing the baseless claims about the pandemic being a scam and the 2020 elections being stolen. Although they try to deny having any connection to QAnon, these Evangelical churches have essentially become the Church of Q. Evangelical ministers who still adhere to the traditional Christian message of peace and love are finding themselves at odds with more & more members of their congregations, and some of them have gotten death threats.

SOURCE: VICE TV Debbie Sands (talk) 20:07, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Academic background[edit]

This article does not read like the term is used by scientists. It might be helpful to get an insight into who developped it and what the scientific background of this scholar is. It should be mentionned in the introduction and etymology section. 2A02:8109:AA38:A100:91FC:FC57:1A15:405 (talk) 03:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sources?[edit]

Global trends point to increasing violent rhetoric and political violence, including more evidence of stochastic terrorism. The article implies that this is an established concept and that there's evidence supporting its existence and growth. This is an extraordinary claim. What are the sources supporting this? MarioGom (talk) 09:41, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looking back through the article I could not find supporting sources either at first glance so I removed the sentence from the lede and improved another sentence to not imply that the term has been growing in usage (or there has been more stochastic terrorism) since that source does not make that claim. Will check some of the newer sources to see if I can find discussion of trends. Superb Owl (talk) 20:14, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Original research and Conflict of Interest editing by @Bartman82[edit]

I removed from the article and am placing here most of the original research distinguishing between 'technical' and 'populist' definitions of the term added by @Bartman82 who largely tagged these as 'minor edits':

An example of technical application[original research?] is evaluating changes in online rhetoric in order to assess the generalized potential threat against law enforcement or military personnel without laying blame or taking action against the sources for the threat.[1][better source needed]

The major change of the populist usage from the technical usage[further explanation needed] is direct attribution of fault to public figures for a given violent event despite a lack of contact with the person committing the violence.

The populist term assigns responsibility, such as the actor Wil Wheaton responding to the 2022 Buffalo, NY shooting with, "Tucker Carlson shares responsibility for the mass murder in Buffalo yesterday."[2] This assessment was made the day after the shooting, prior to any investigation issuing a report or other finding of fact.

In this populist definition[verification needed], the public accusations that a person is a terrorist or murderer is "targeting language" [3][4] and can cause resulting actions, ranging from angry protestors threatening Tucker Carlson at his home[5]to the murder of abortion provider George Tiller who had been publicly called a "baby killer."[6][7]

While both usages are found in academic work, the populist usage is usually by pundits and politicians to assign fault for violent events to opposition figures while the technical use is usually in the risk industry as well as counterterrorism circles. The overlap between the technical use and populist use has been of increasing interest, particularly in light of potential legal considerations and the analysis of the role of social media.[8][9][verification needed]


Superb Owl (talk) 20:11, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

also removed this sentence that appears to be synthesis since the CNN source or the text don't mention Stochastic Terrorism
The Congressional baseball shooting in 2017 was a "lone wolf" mass shooting that targeted members of Congress, injuring six people. The shooter was an avid consumer of political social media and repeated pundit talking points in his own posts.[9][10][improper synthesis?] Superb Owl (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also removed this sentence which may be original research and have been added by an editor that may have a conflict of interest:
Bart Kemper points to the use of machine learning to analyze social media for threatening speech and Artificial Intelligence to predict trends based on probability,[11][better source needed] but also points to the challenges in establishing legitimate ethical or legal causation.[9][better source needed] Superb Owl (talk) 22:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Stochastic harm occurs when the cause (hazard) and its effect (harm) are indirectly linked by a probabilistic relationship.[citation needed] The idea of stochastic harm was first published in 1978, it originally applied to the unintended negative effects of medical procedures using ionizing radiation,[12][verification needed] such as radiation therapy for cancer when the treatment causes another type of cancer. The term "stochastic harm" has also been generalized to describe harm related to environmental problems such as climate change[13][better source needed] and some types of disinformation.[14][better source needed] Superb Owl (talk) 23:17, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Woo uses Markov chain and computational complexity theory[excessive detail?] to describe the corelation between media reports of violent speech and a general increase in terrorist violence as part of formal risk assessment regarding terrorism attacks. A key element of Woo's concept is that the task of quantifying "terrorism risk" should not be confused with predicting the next "terrorist attack". Just as no seismologist is capable of predicting the time, place and magnitude of the next major earthquake in California, it is possible for a seismic risk analyst to evaluate the annual exceedance probability of loss to a California property portfolio. Similarly, stochastic terrorism analysis correlates a general risk in terrorist activity to the amount of relevant violent speech but cannot predict a specific event. The intent is to assess the risk over time. A cluster of like-minded individuals, who may never have actually met, could collectively contrive a terrorist act using internet chat-rooms. Being spontaneously generated by inspirational rhetoric, such a group would be almost impossible to infiltrate. A lone attacker like Richard Reid, who carried out the 2001 "shoe bombing" attempt, shows the terrorism risk can be a single person inspired to act.[15] Superb Owl (talk) 23:19, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is opposed to conventional criminal activity similar to the 2009 Fort Hood shooting where a terrorist was radicalized through direct conversations with individuals.[16] The use of "stochastic" factors and "stochastic terrorism" is still used amongst risk assessment professionals and anti-terrorism activities.[17][18] Superb Owl (talk) 23:22, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Greg, Lindsay; Jason, Brown; Brian, David; Christopher, Owen; Andrew, Hall (July 2023). "Microtargeting Unmasked: Safeguarding Law Enforcement, the Military, and the Nation in the Era of Personalized Threats" (PDF). Army Cyber Institute (Technical Report). Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  2. ^ Wil, Wheaton. "All of this Stochastic Terrorism is by design". Daily Kos. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  3. ^ Kemper, Bart (December 2022). "AI and Stochastic Terrorism – Should it be done?". 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW). pp. 347–356. doi:10.1109/ISSREW55968.2022.00091. ISBN 978-1-6654-7679-9. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  4. ^ Jørgen, Staun (2009). A linguistic turn of terrorism studie (PDF) (Working Paper). Danish Institute for International Studies. ISBN 978-87-7605-302-4. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  5. ^ Khalil, Ashraf (November 8, 2018). "Protesters target home of Fox News' Tucker Carlson". Associated Press. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  6. ^ Cohen, David S. (August 9, 2016). "Trump's Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  7. ^ Rawwas, Mohammed (1 April 2019). "Opinion: On Christchurch & stochastic terrorism". The Northern Iowan. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  8. ^ Amman, Molly; Meloy, Reid (December 2022). "Incitement to Violence and Stochastic Terrorism: Legal, Academic, and Practical Parameters for Researchers and Investigators". Terrorism and Political Violence. 36 (2): 234–245. doi:10.1080/09546553.2022.2143352. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  9. ^ a b c Kemper, Bart (December 2022). "AI and Stochastic Terrorism – Should it be done?". 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW). pp. 347–356. doi:10.1109/ISSREW55968.2022.00091. ISBN 978-1-6654-7679-9. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  10. ^ Pagliery, Jose (June 15, 2017). "Suspect in congressional shooting was Bernie Sanders supporter, strongly anti-Trump". CNN. Retrieved 27 March 2024.
  11. ^ Nwanga, Matthew; Okafor, Kennedy; Achumba, Ifeyinwa; Chukwudebe, Gloria (February 2022). "Predictive Forensic Based—Characterization of Hidden Elements in Criminal Networks Using Baum-Welch Optimization Technique". Illumination of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity and Forensics. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-93452-1. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  12. ^ Caldas, L. R.; Tyrrell, Rex M.; Leitao, A. (1978). International Symposium on Current Topics in Radiobiology and Photobiology. Brazil: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
  13. ^ Billette de Villemeur, Etienne; Leroux, Justin (December 2016). A Liability Approach to Climate Policy: A Thought Experiment (Report). University Library of Munich, Germany.
  14. ^ Khan, Shehroze; Wright, James (June 17, 2021). "Disinformation, Stochastic Harm, and Costly Effort: A Principal-Agent Analysis of Regulating Social Media Platforms". arXiv:2106.09847v5 [cs.GT].
  15. ^ Woo, Gordon (2002-04-01). "Quantitative Terrorism Risk Assessment". The Journal of Risk Finance. 4 (1): 7–14. doi:10.1108/eb022949. ISSN 1526-5943. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
  16. ^ McCaulley, Clark; Moskalenko, Sophia (December 2013). "Toward a Profile of Lone Wolf Terrorists: What Moves an Individual From Radical Opinion to Radical Action". Terrorism and Political Violence. 26 (1): 69–85. doi:10.1080/09546553.2014.849916.
  17. ^ Woo, Gordon (April 2009). "Terrorism Threat Assessment and Management" (PDF). Defence Against Terrorism Review. 2 (1): 101–119. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  18. ^ Werner, Christoph; Ismail, Raveem (2021). "Structured Expert Judgement in Adversarial Risk Assessment: An Application of the Classical Model for Assessing Geo-Political Risk in the Insurance Underwriting Industry". Expert Judgement in Risk and Decision Analysis. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science. Vol. 293. pp. 459–484. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-46474-5_21. ISBN 978-3-030-46473-8.

References[edit]

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