Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2009, International and Comparative Politics

This study measures the influence that multiple social, political, and economic conditions have on the development of ethno/national separatist terrorist organizations. It begins by analyzing the nationalist theories of primordialism, modernism, and ethnosymbolism, and the terrorist theories of strategic logic and psychology. The nationalist theories consider cultural symbols a powerful component behind nationalist movements and populations with significant symbolic attachments especially prone to react aggressively against perceived threats to those symbols. Proponents of strategic logic and psychological theory also view terrorism as reactive but deviate on whether this response is conceived rationally. Examining the origins of Basque and Catalan terrorism and Roma passivity in Spain assists in identifying background conditions that are evaluated using a logit regression model. The logit model assesses two-hundred ninety-seven minority populations in one-hundred twenty-six states, primarily between 1945 and 2003. The results show cultural identity and sensitivity, violent encounters, political freedom, social unrest, underrepresentation, disproportionate economic privation, and stagnant educational systems and other factors of civil development correlating significantly with the formation of ethno/national separatist terrorist organizations. These findings imply an ability to detect populations and environments with increased potential for producing ethno/national separatist terrorism, and that by addressing those conditions facilitating its development, it may be possible to reduce the probability of additional campaigns developing.

Committee: Liam Anderson PhD (Committee Chair); Chad Atkinson PhD (Committee Member); Primod Kantha PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History; International Relations; Political Science; Psychology; Sociology; Statistics

PHD, Kent State University, 2010, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Political Science

This research seeks to discover the nature of Turkish law enforcement officers' (LEOs) perceptions of terrorism and terrorist organizations through the application of Q technique. Turkish LEOs' perceptions reflect their personal experiences with terrorism as well as their agencies' accumulated learning in a country that has had a terrorism history. The study uses Q methodology and research findings to create a typology of terrorist organizations in the Republic of Turkey, and it demonstrates that the methodology facilitates the investigation of terrorist organizations and their typical characteristics (i.e., distinguishing traits), including their methods of operation. Q technique permits the quantitative assessment of terrorist organizations and facilitates predictions about terrorist organizations, or types of terrorist organizations, that have likely been the perpetrators of past terrorist incidents. The study demonstrates how to make such predictions through application of quantitative assessments. Participants, providing data about terrorist organizations, are police investigators of counterterrorism units within the Turkish National Police and serve as expert informers in the research project. Nonprobability and snowball sampling of expert informers has resulted in 49 participants, who have produced 61 Q sorts comprised of 80 characteristics that are used in assessing 11 terrorist groups: Al Qaeda's Turkish elements, Hizbullah, Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front, Marxist Leninist Communist Party, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and others. The correlation and factor analysis of individual Q sorts have resulted in comparative judgments about organizational profiles of different terrorist groups and types of groups. Factor analysis has also led to the discovery of five functional categories (or types) of terrorist organizations: ethno-separatist, intimidator religious, self-conscious religious, provocative religious, and communist.

Committee: Steven R. Brown (Committee Chair); Mark Colvin (Committee Member); Eric S. Jefferis (Committee Member); Mark S. Fleisher (Committee Member); Stephen Webster (Other) Subjects: Criminology; Political Science

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2023, History

As time moves forward, events from the past become blurred in memory. People remember, honor, and learn from history. On September 11, 2001, the United States lost 2,983 civilian lives in a terrorist attack by al Qaeda. Since 2001, the United States government has made many decisions aimed at protecting those on United States soil. To commemorate the lives lost and to prevent an act of terror in the future, historians evaluate how to remember and learn from the events that occurred on September 11. Learning from the past prepares people for the future. To educate future generations, middle and high school teachers must provide students with valuable lesson plans about September 11. In the middle school and high school classrooms around the country, the process and content used to teach the terrorist attacks of September 11 has evolved over the past twenty years, from relying mostly on personal accounts to include academic articles, textbooks, online resources, and other materials to help students understand how and why September 11 happened the way it did.

Committee: Molly Wood (Advisor); Thomas Taylor (Committee Member); Amy McGuffey (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; History; Middle School Education; Political Science; Secondary Education; Social Studies Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, Political Science

The purpose of this sequential mixed methods study is to provide policymakers with a more-complete understanding of the varying effectiveness of leadership decapitation as a counterterrorism technique. To this end, my central research question asks, “why do certain terrorist groups endure despite experiencing leadership decapitation?”. Drawing on previous studies of terrorism and theories of organizational behavior, I suggest that a high degree of bureaucratization and the provision of social services reduce the destabilizing effects of leadership decapitation by decreasing a group's functional dependence on any single individual to secure the resources necessary to survive. The first phase of this study is a qualitative exploration of two existing explanations of organizational endurance, bureaucracy and incentive-based organizational maintenance, that should, prima facie, explain leadership decapitation's varying outcomes. I use a deviant case study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and most important politically-violent groups in history, to illustrate existing explanations' weaknesses and to find evidence linking my proposed characteristics to the outcome of survival. Based on my qualitative findings, I generate a set of hypotheses about the relationship between select organization-level factors and the effectiveness of leadership decapitation. I then test these hypotheses on a unique dataset of 138 terrorist organizations using both descriptive and binary logistic regression statistical analyses to determine their applicability to a wider class of cases. The quantitative results indicate that my hypotheses are partially supported by the data: While providing social services is by far the strongest predictor of an organization's likelihood of surviving leadership decapitation, the relationship between bureaucracy and survival was found to be non-significant. After discussing the implications of these findings, I present a preliminary set of c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Rothgeb (Committee Chair); Venelin Ganev (Committee Member); Warren Mason (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Political Science

MA, Kent State University, 2013, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Justice Studies

While terrorism has become an international problem, it has long been an intense problem for Turkey. The main focus of Turkey has almost always been on fighting terrorism through conventional means of superior coercive power. However, some people responsible for preventing terrorism have begun to think that an understanding of the motives of terrorism and terrorist actions on an individual level is necessary. Therefore, this study delves into an explanation about the effect of belief in becoming a member of a terrorist organization and the impact of this belief on the level of violence exerted by the members of three terrorist organizations in Turkey. In order to clarify the point, this study employs a quantitative research approach by using official data gathered from interviews of terror-related suspects obtained by the Antiterror Department of the Turkish National Police. After appropriate statistical analyses were made, this research concludes that as the belief in the tenets of the terrorist organization increases, the likelihood of membership in the terrorist organization and the level of active involvement in terrorist activities also increase. Based on that insight, further strategies could be set on understanding the belief system of people who are prone to participate in terrorist organizations and political reforms in relevant regions.

Committee: David Kessler Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Alternative Dispute Resolution; Criminology; Middle Eastern Studies; Peace Studies; Public Policy

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Education : Criminal Justice

This study examines the role of structural disadvantage in the non-terrorist violent and terrorism-related crimes. The objectives of the current research are to find answers to the questions regarding why and how crime rates vary across the provinces.The present study uses macro-level analyses to examine relationships between structural disadvantage variables and crime. The current study will use provinces of Turkey as units of analysis, and will look at the effects of different structural characteristics of provinces in connection with violent and terrorism-related crime rates. Unemployment, residential instability, poverty, economic inequality, family disruption, and low education are employed as structural disadvantage factors and their correlations with crimes are examined. Additionally, percent youth, population density, and region (only in terrorism-related crimes) are used as control variables. In the current research, total violent, homicide, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, and terrorism-related crimes in 81 provinces of Turkey are examined for a three year period ranging from 2006 to 2008. Crime data is obtained from Turkish National Police. Measures of structural disadvantage data are obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute, Census, Ministry of National Education, and Ministry of Health. Multivariate OLS and negative binomial regression results for non-terrorist violent crimes in general reveal statistically significant correlations between three structural disadvantage variables and rates of total violence, homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery. Study results indicate that unemployment and family disruption have a significant positive impact on all types of non-terrorist violent crime rates. Lastly, low education is other structural disadvantage variable that is significantly and positively associated with total violent, homicide, aggravated assault, and robbery crime rates in present study. Zero inflated negative binomial analyses o (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pamela Wilcox PhD (Committee Chair); James Frank PhD (Committee Member); John Wright PhD (Committee Member); Melissa Moon PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2006, Arts and Sciences : Psychology

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the presumed ability to successfully understand and manage emotion. EI may affect the ability of security personnel to gauge the relevance of emotional cues in determining whether a suspect is a terrorist. 180 participants decided whether “virtual reality” animated characters were to be designated as terrorists, in a discrimination-learning paradigm. Three types of identifying cue (positive or negative facial emotion, and an emotion neutral cue) were manipulated, and the number of errors was recorded, over 100 trials. EI, personality, and general cognitive ability were assessed pre-task. Subjective state was assessed pre- and post-task. Results showed faster learning with emotive cues. EI and personality failed to predict performance; but EI predicted subjective state, which predicted rate of learning with emotive cues. Practical techniques for support of security personnel should focus on how subjective states may impact attention to potentially relevant cues to the status of a suspect.

Committee: Dr. Gerald Matthews (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Social Work

The purpose of this study was to explore the identity changes experienced by Arab Muslims residing in Columbus, Ohio, during the Spring of 2011 based on the Arab Muslims' experiences with terrorism-labeling and Arab Muslims' perceptions of terrorism-labeling factors. This study also intended to discover the predictive relationship between the characteristics of participants and changes in their identity. The study was guided by Labeling and Social Identity theories. These theories were also utilized in developing a tenable theoretical Terrorism-Labeling Influence model (TLI) that explained the complex of impact terrorism-labeling on well-being. Two hundred twenty three Arab Muslims were recruited through the largest three Islamic organizations in Columbus, Ohio. Non-probability data collection method (convenience sampling) was utilized. The participants responded to a questionnaire developed by the researcher. The instruments of this study included the Arab Muslims' Experiences with Terrorism-Labeling, Arab Muslims' Perceptions of Terrorism-Labeling, Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, Brief Arab Religious Coping Scale, and a demographic questionnaire. Descriptive and correlation statistics were used to explore the associations between demographic variables and changes in Arab Muslims' ethnic and religious identities. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to answer the research questions. The findings of this study did not support the research hypotheses indicating that there was no correlation between the independent variables, Arab Muslims' experiences with terrorism-labeling (AMETL) and Arab Muslims' perceptions of terrorism-labeling (AMPTL) and Arab Muslims ethnic and religious identities. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

Committee: Denise Bronson PhD (Committee Chair); Maria Julia PhD (Committee Member); Mo-Yee Lee PhD (Committee Member); Korie Edwards PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Academic Guidance Counseling; Adult Education; Behavioral Psychology; Counseling Education; Counseling Psychology; Educational Psychology; Ethnic Studies; Individual and Family Studies; International Relations; Islamic Studies; Multicultural Education; Multimedia Co

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Sociology

Since September the 11th, 2001, terrorism has received renewed attention and study from the media, publics and scholars alike. While voluminous journalistic writings and some empirical research exists on the causes and structures of terrorism, comparatively little research has thoroughly explored the political and social impacts of terrorism and the responses societies and states have to terrorism. Conventional wisdom suggests that terrorism is born of political and economic grievance in poor, quasi-authoritarian states. Indeed, a large number of terrorist attacks are within developing nations. However, the relationship between structural conditions and terror may be more complicated. What if terrorism contributes to political and social disruption, which in turn leads to even more grievances that inspire further campaigns of political violence? In other words, does terrorism breed the very conditions that encourage insurgency in the first place, leading to a downward spiral of conflict and grievance thereby worsening the plight developing nations find themselves in? This dissertation project argues that a major period of terrorism within the developing world stimulates a series of important political and social crises that under certain specific conditions spawn broader and more intense forms of political conflict. I explore the relationships between terrorism and specific political outcomes for a large sample of developing nations over a thirty-five year period. I find evidence that non-state, civil-based terrorism plays an important role in altering political systems within several developing societies. For instance, on average terrorism tends to increase state repression over accommodative policies creating an atmosphere of state terrorism. Terrorism also raises the chances for irregular transfers of power (e.g., coup d'etats) and transforms into full-scale civil war under certain specific conditions. By focusing on the consequences of terrorism across a broad s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Edward Crenshaw (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2008, Popular Culture

Through their representations of torture, 24 and Battlestar Galactica build on a wider political discourse. Although 24 began production on its first season several months before the terrorist attacks, the show has become a contested space where opinions about the war on terror and related political and military adventures are played out. The producers of Battlestar Galactica similarly use the space of television to raise questions and problematize issues of war. Together, these two television shows reference a long history of discussion of what role torture should play not just in times of war but also in a liberal democracy. This project seeks to understand the multiple ways that ideological discourses have played themselves out through representations of torture in these television programs. This project begins with a critique of the popular discourse of torture as it portrayed in the popular news media. Using an ideological critique and theories of televisual realism, I argue that complex representations of torture work to both challenge and reify dominant and hegemonic ideas about what torture is and what it does. This project also leverages post-structural analysis and critical gender theory as a way of understanding exactly what ideological messages the programs producers are trying to articulate.

Committee: Dr. Jeffrey Brown (Committee Chair); Dr. Becca Cragin (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Communication; Mass Media

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

The purpose of this study is to analyze the emotional use of illustration on the front pages of various newspapers published in the United States on the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and identify trends in illustration types and the use of symbolism. The 9/11 attacks were the worst act of terror that ever happened in the United States. However, the 9/11 terrorist attacks gave editorial designers a big challenge on the front page design, especially on imagery, since it has a strong impact on a publication's feel. In post-9/11 journalism, the tenth anniversary editions of the terrorist attacks were made to be more special and meaningful. This study is intended to provide the field of editorial design with a helpful understanding of the use of symbolism in editorial illustrations to enhance emotional expression.

Committee: Mccrystle Wood MFA (Committee Chair); Karen Hughes M.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Design