Online Arguments against Al-Qaeda: An Exploratory Analysis

While the idea of countering ‘violent extremist’ narratives is a matter of considerable policy interest, particularly in relation to beliefs associated with the wider Al-Qaeda movement, little has been written on the specific dynamics of arguments between supporters and critics of Al-Qaeda on the Internet. In this exploratory article, I attempt, based broadly on the pragma-dialectic perspective of argumentation theory, a detailed analysis of one set of arguments between supporters and critics of Al-Qaeda in a debate which took place on an Arabic language Web Forum in late 2009 and early 2010.