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Identifying Threat: Improving Digital Risk Assessment of Lone-Actor Terrorists: Content- and Thematic Analysis of Digital Written Communication
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology.
2022 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 80 credits / 120 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Lone-actor terrorism is a major threat to national security in both Europe and North America. TRAP-18 is a risk assessment protocol based on a psychological framework, specifically developed for lone-actor terrorists. Digital forums have shown to be an increased platform for radicalization and communication of future attacks. Akrami et al. (2022) have developed a digital risk assessment measure used for identifying potential future lone actors in identifying Person of Security Concern (PoSC). The measure uses dictionary-based text analysis and machine-learning techniques that classify cases by a General Risk Score (GRS). The present study is a systematic review of the cases that are classified as false-positive by the GRS. A content analysis was performed with a human evaluation to locate the false-positive cases. A thematic analysis was performed and found three themes as the main reason for the false-positive classifications; (a) Mentioning violence or death from a third-party perspective, (b) Depression and suicidal thoughts, and (c) Describing fictional/historical events. Thus, the numan evaluation reduced the false-positive cases by more than 80 percent. THese findings are discussed in relation to the strenghts and weaknesses of digital and manual assessment of risk for violence. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022.
Keywords [en]
digital risk assessment, lone-actor terrorism, trap-18, threat assessment, mixed methods
National Category
Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-477904OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-477904DiVA, id: diva2:1673122
Educational program
Master Programme in Social Sciences
Supervisors
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Available from: 2023-03-03 Created: 2022-06-20 Last updated: 2023-03-03Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
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Output format
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