This guide has been prepared to assist you when researching your terrorism and counter-terrorism assignments. Any research around terrorism related themes comes with risk and this guide will help you navigate the web safely and give you some useful resource suggestions.
There are several laws that you should be aware of when carrying out terrorism and related research. It is an offence to:
Collect or make a record of information that that could be useful to a person planning a terrorist act (Terrorism Act 2000, Section 58)
View or otherwise access via the internet documents or records containing information which is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism (Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019)
There is a defense if the information is used for academic research purposes. It is important to take appropriate steps when undertaking security-sensitive research to ensure the activity does not to come under the suspicion of the police.
Disseminate terrorist publications, including by electronic means. The Terrorism Act 2006 gives a broad definition of what this includes. Academic research is not a defense under this Act.
While there may be legitimate reasons to download security-sensitive material (such as the Al-Qaeda manual) and visiting security-sensitive websites (such as Jihadi websites) for research, the police may interpret this as "evidence of sympathy for, and even willingness to collude with, terrorism". Some activities may monitored by the police.
The above information has been summarised from this Universities UK document.
Here is a table of 'do's and don'ts' to help you recognise what to avoid when searching and steps you can take to find appropriate research material.
| Do | Don't |
|---|---|
| Avoid any publications specifically from terrorist organisations | Share security-sensitive information with others |
| Always check the origins of a source before you use it | Use something if you think it may be risky. Leave it alone and find something else |
| Use your reading list as a starting point | Only rely on the internet. Use other tools at your disposal alongside Google! |
| Use a range of sources, including academic journals, carefully selected websites, newspapers | Forget research ethics. Be aware of the University research ethics code (particularly if you undertake a dissertation in this area) |
| Try smart searching techniques on Google | |
| Contact your Academic Librarian if you need further help with research |
Before you begin your research, it is worth doing a bit of planning up front. Consider your research questions and the different search words that relate to this. These are what we would call keywords. You can map these out in a way that helps you to carry out your searches and come up with different search strategies. Here is an example keyword table:
| Terrorist groups | Motives | UK |
|---|---|---|
| International terrorism |
Political ideologies |
United Kingdom |
|
Terrorist organisations |
Religious ideologies |
England |
| Extremist groups | Ideology |
From here you can develop meaningful search strategies e.g. Terrorist groups and motives / Terrorist groups and political ideologies
