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This study aims to discuss the phenomenon of lone wolf terrorists in a broader context as part of religious and violent issues by discussing them through the perspective of the movement. This study takes the opposite position of the widely believed definition of a wolf. In the standard definition commonly used in understanding lone wolves, it is said that the actions they carry out are not related to larger terrorist networks. They are considered independent and do not experience mobilization in action. This study wants to show otherwise by discussing two well-known cases, namely Nidal Malik Hasan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In discussing this, researchers use qualitative methods with the type of literature research. As a literature research, this research relies on various relevant libraries spread online. The results showed that Hasan and Abdulmutallab were indeed mobilized by Al-Awlaki, a respected terrorist recruiter among Islamists. Both knew Al-Awlaki from the internet and consumed his lecture materials. They were even active in establishing contacts with Al-Awlaki before deciding to commit acts of violence. Indeed, Hasan seemed more independent because he did not get orders than Abdulmutallab who met, received training and direct orders from Al-Awlaki. However, both are still said to have been mobilized by Al- Awlaki, albeit to different degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To better understand the implications of applying different labels to perpetrators of mass violence. Method: Two experiments (Study 1: N = 307 college students, Study 2: N = 696 community sample recruited through Prolific Academic) were conducted to examine U.S. public perceptions of "terrorist," "lone wolf," and "mass shooter" (only in Study 2) labels. In both studies, participants were randomly assigned to consider one of the terms and respond to prompts about the assumed demographic characteristics and traits of the perpetrator. In Study 2, participants also responded to prompts about the appropriate consequences for the perpetrator and the best policies to address violence committed by that type of perpetrator. Results: Participants displayed much overlap in their characterizations and responses to the labels, but important distinctions emerged, particularly with the terrorist label. Across studies, the terrorist was perceived as more religious, while lone wolf and mass shooter were perceived as more likely to be White and U.S. citizens. The terrorist was characterized by group and ideological characteristics and more highly associated with several demonizing traits, while the lone wolf and mass shooter were characterized as more depressed, sad, and lonely. The terrorist label evoked less support for mental health treatment and more support for tracking associates of the perpetrator and increasing military involvement. Conclusions: Awareness of the different associations evoked by perpetrator labels may help to avoid biases in their application and can shape how mass violence and its consequences are conceptualized by the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to investigate the background, psychological characteristics and motivations of independent actors who carried out attacks in Israel. It also examined the antecedent factors that influenced their decision to carry out an attack, and their retrospective attitudes to the act. Forty-five Palestinians who had carried out attacks against Israeli targets on their own initiative were interviewed in prison about their background, motivations, circumstances and process of the attack. Thirty-nine of them were also interviewed by a clinical psychologist and took a battery of psychological tests. Twenty-six of these were diagnosed as suffering from one or more of the following: psychotic background, severe personality disorder, and suicidality. A considerable number of the participants described personal, family or social problems that influenced their decision to carry out the attack. Three dominant motives for carrying out an attack were identified: suicidality, a psychotic state, and an ideological national-religious motivation. The characteristics of the attack were influenced by the dominant type of motivation. The discussion compares the findings of this study with those of a study on suicide bombers and with studies on behavioral characteristics of independent actors in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine how team process factors relate to students' self-efficacy, attitude, and learning satisfaction in flipped learning. Since lone-wolf students tend to have little patience for the group work process and exhibit a lack of organizational commitment, this study also explores how students' preferences for collaborative work or individual work affect their self-efficacy, attitude, and learning satisfaction in a flipped classroom. The participants were thirty-four undergraduate students enrolled in a consumer behavior course offered by a school of business at a university in Seoul, South Korea. Data were collected through surveys that measured team process, lone-wolf tendencies, self-efficacy, and attitude during the course. The results show the factor of team trust had a significant negative correlation with the lone-wolf measure but a positive correlation with responsibility, communication, cognitive and social competency, and self-efficacy. Moreover, communication and responsibility were positive predictors of self-efficacy and attitude. These results imply the usefulness of identifying critical variables of individual difference, such as lone-wolf tendencies, that could lead to both dysfunctional team process and low outcomes. Based on the results, this study provides implications for structuring and managing team projects in a higher education setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twenty-first century, it is important for the individual to reduce the behaviors of acting alone and working alone in order to maintain a happy and successful career. The aim of this study is to examine the validity and reliability of the Lone Wolf Scale developed by Barr, Dixon, and Gassenheimer (2005), which reveals individuals to act and work lone for Turkish culture. This research was carried out with 360 university students (212 female, 148 male). In order to evaluate the validity of the scale, construct validity, item discrimination and concordance validity were examined. It was seen that the construct validity analysis confirmed the single-factor and seven-item structure of the scale. The item-total correlations calculated to examine item discrimination were found to be at an acceptable level. Within the scope of concordance validity, it was found that there were negative and significant relationships between the scale and the total and sub-dimensions of the Career Adaptability Scale-New Form. The Cronbach alpha coefficient calculated for reliability and the test-retest correlation value were found to be at acceptable levels. The measurement invariance of the scale on the male and female groups was examined and it was concluded that the single-factor structure was the same in both groups. The findings indicate that the Turkish version of the Lone Wolf Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent cases of terror attacks planned and perpetrated by individuals have generated an ongoing public and academic debate about how to understand this phenomenon. The moniker "lone wolf" stands at the center of this debate. In this Research Note, we highlight three overarching points of criticism levelled at the use of this term: one conceptual, one normative and one empirical. While the solution to the latter problem primarily lies in being stringent, proposed solutions for the first two problems involved the exchange of the metaphor "lone wolf" with terms such as "lone actor" and "solo terrorist". This Research Note focuses on patterns in public, popular cultural and academic use of "lone wolf" as well as the proposed alternatives "lone actor" and "solo terrorist". It does so by utilizing data from Google Trends, Google Books Ngram Viewer and Google Scholar for the period 2000 to 2020. Trends in Google searches across the world indicate a moderate increase in public attention whereas using English language literature as a proxy for popular cultural attention shows a steady increase. Finally, academic use of the term "lone wolf" exploded in the aftermath of the July 22, 2011 terror attacks and has remained at high levels ever since. Among the proposed alternatives to "lone wolf", only "lone actor" has truly gained academic prominence. While overcoming some of the issues with the "lone wolf" metaphor, patterns in the data indicate that the neutrality and abstract nature of the term "lone actor" also comes with some drawbacks. To help counteract this, we suggest that researchers avoid using shorthand versions and consistently use the full term "lone actor terrorist". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses narrative, time and causality in current general histories of jazz, in the context of the ontological turn in the field. It proposes that jazz studies should go beyond romance as the dominant historical emplotment, pluralize their narratives, and establish a new historiographical relationship to the past in order to produce a truly global, decentred and decolonized history of the genre. The article is divided in three sections, which successively explore historical narratives, representations of time and causality in the past, and some theoretical problems in global and local histories. The phenomenon of "lone wolf " terrorism, which has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars, consists of terror attacks perpetrated without the operational involvement of terrorist organizations in initiating, planning, or executing the attack. This phenomenon lacks a clear center of gravity directing the actions of "lone wolf " terrorists; and as such, it is crucial to understand the system of motivations influencing independent assailants to perpetrate attacks. This article is based on extensive studies conducted on the motivations of "lone wolf " terrorists by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya. It seeks to contribute to the literature on the topic by proposing a new model. The "Bathtub Model" suggests that the process of the formation of the "lone wolf 's" decision to perpetrate an attack can be akin to a container of water (such as a bath), which would be filled up by various sources of water, each representing groups and subgroups of motivations. The upper threshold of the "bathtub" model represents therefore the maximal level of the "lone wolf 's" ability to contain his motivations, frustrations, and emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The appearance of individuals who carry out brutal attacks around the world on their own without formal membership in a terrorist organization has alarmed all security services. These popularly called Lone Wolf terrorists have forced all the world's intelligence and security agencies to develop a completely different approach to this type of terrorism. Lone Actor terrorism as a form of violence has become accepted across the planet by a wide variety of radical groups, rightists, leftists, radical Islamists and has become the number one security issue. The paper will present the historical development of Lone Actor terrorism in order to make recommendations based on the hitherto known facts on how to control this way of endangering security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorist attacks often lead to public backlashes. Following the attacks on July 22, 2011 in Norway, Norwegians showed support for democratic values such as "openness," "democracy," and "tolerance" in the public debate and in the commemorations across the country. They also reported higher out-group trust. This paper explores two possible reasons for this increase in trust using a unique panel fielded before and right after the attacks. The first is that cognitive dissonance led people to dissociate from the terrorist and his ideology. The second is that the increase in trust was a response to the public backlash after the attacks. The increase in trust was not caused by cognitive dissonance. Rather, people who were already positive towards immigration, or who saw positive effects of the attacks, became more trusting than others did, and Progress Party supporters increased their trust less than others. These findings are interpreted as a response to the attacks and the political characteristics of the backlash. The study concludes by discussing implications for our understanding of the different consequences of attacks for the terrorists' imagined constituencies and for the broader public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Polemos is the property of Croatian Sociological Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the impact of social media on the wave of Palestinian lone-wolf attacks against Israelis from October 2015 through September 2016. My principal argument is that social media played an important role in shaping the identity, perceptions, and behavioral patterns of dozens of assailants, and was key in creating the dynamic that ultimately characterized both the spreading of the idea of lone-wolf attacks and its execution. Social media reflected reality on the ground while simultaneously nourishing, amplifying, and escalating the situation by providing a platform for the emergence of new sources of authority, including an online subculture with distinct codes and pseudo-ritual patterns to support assailants. Social media also contributed substantially to shaping the contagious character of the attacks, and their capacity to persist without direct organizational guidance, following a typical epidemiological dynamic of spread, containment, and preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The apparent growth of lone wolf violence, combined with the increased use of social media to recruit new members, contributes to a blurring of the line between domestic and international terrorism. Where a relatively simple distinction used to suffice for scholars, we are seeing more frequent attacks, traditionally classified as domestic terrorism, but that receive inspiration from a foreign ideology or global movement. This article examines some of these trends related to social media and solo perpetrators, and suggests the use of the term "transnational terrorism", to account for the growing incidence of terrorist attacks that do not fit properly into either existing category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the utility of a sociological model of social organization developed by Best and Luckenbill (1994) to classify the radicalization processes of terrorists (i.e., extremist perpetrators who engaged in ideologically motivated acts of violence) who are usually categorized as loner or lone wolf attackers. There are several organizational frameworks used to define or classify violent acts performed by individuals who may or may not have ties to extremist groups, but these studies largely ignore the role of social relationships in radicalization and the extent to which they inform our knowledge of terror. To address this gap, we apply the Best and Luckenbill model of social organization using a qualitative analysis of three case studies of four lone actor or small cell terrorists. The findings demonstrate lone actors are not always true loners in the context of radicalization, and highlights the ways that the Internet and social ties foster the radicalization processes of terror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on terrorist attacks carried out by so-called 'lone wolves' or 'lone actors'. It provides an analytical evaluation of the basic characteristics of these attackers and discusses possible access to their identification in society. To create the profile of a 'typical' lone wolf, we collected information from a database of lone wolves who committed their terrorist attacks in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Switzerland, Norway and Australia from 1998 to 2016. Based on these data, it was demonstrated that lone wolves are not homogenous group, therefore, there is no one 'typical' lone wolf. Instead, three main groups of lone wolves were identified: 1) lone wolves with a criminal past, 2) lone wolves with a mental illness and 3) young lone wolves coming from minority groups in the country. These characteristics could be used as an auxiliary tool by state security forces during identification of potential lone wolf terrorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White racist serial killer Peter Mangs is the most politically conscious lone wolf terrorist Sweden has seen thus far. Adopting the tactics of Joseph Paul Franklin to the city of Malmö, Mangs committed at least three murders and twelve murder attempts between 2003 and 2010. Well-versed in white power literature and leaderless resistance tactics, Mangs aimed at “igniting a race war” by shooting Black, Muslim, and Roma citizens to amplify racialized tensions, grievances, and anxieties in the increasingly segregated city. Yet, Mangs is not included in any database of single-actor terrorism, as these depend on how a perpetrator or incident is defined by the police, the courts, and the media. In this case, Mangs’ political motives were ignored by everyone, except by people in the targeted communities and the white racist milieu. This fact highlights the importance of ethnographic methods to terrorism studies. Based on ten three-hour interviews with Mangs, an analysis of his own political writings, previously not known to the public, interviews with Mangs’ victims, their friends and relatives, and extensive fieldwork in Malmö among activists across the political spectrum, including people who hailed Mangs’ deeds as heroic, this essay explores the impact of urban lone wolf terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last two decades, lone wolf terrorists in Western countries have been significantly changing their modus operandi. Part of these changes and possibly even one of their causes is the increasing use of the internet by lone wolves. This article reviews the role of the internet in the preparation of a terrorist attack as well as during the process of radicalisation of lone wolves. The possibilities and methodical flaws of lone wolf identification on the internet are also discussed. Based on current knowledge, it can be said that the Internet still has a limited role for lone wolves during the preparation of their terrorist attacks. However, it has been demonstrated, that as an efficient communication tool, the internet is of considerable importance in the process of lone wolf radicalisation. The internet is also a place where lone wolves may leak indications of their future actions. These leakages may be utilised for the identification of future lone wolf terrorists on discussion forums or radical websites using semi-automatic methods. However, the biggest drawbacks of these methods is their inability to distinguish between future lone wolf terrorists and common radical authors with no real intention on committing any terrorist act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is trying to briefly and generally present the philosophic and sociologic conceptions about paradigms regardless if these have been elaborated by specialists in the field of criminal law and how the influence of paradigm analyzed (paradigm of compared criminal law) reflects on terrorism by emphasizing the fact that a paradigm appears in the context of substituting the former ideas and acceptance without reserves of new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]