Much of what we think we know about terrorism is based upon quantitative analyses of launched attacks. This constitutes a problem because launched attacks only represent part of the picture: what is left after security services have done their job at foiling plots. Analyses that exclusively focus on launched attacks risk misrepresenting both the scale and nature of terrorist threat, depending on the countermeasures in place. To gain a better understanding of terrorism trends and what drives terrorists we ought to make use of the data on foiled plots. In this talk Petter Nesser presents some initial findings from a forthcoming study with Thomas Hegghammer on this untapped data resource in terrorism studies.
Petter Nesser is a senior researcher at FFI’s Terrorism Research Group. He is a political scientist, historian and arabist, educated at the University of Oslo (UiO) and The American University in Cairo (AUC). Dr Nesser has conducted extensive research on European jihadism for more than a decade while concentrating on why and how terrorist cells emerge, and how they operate.
Nesser is currently focusing on jihadism in the Middle East post-ISIS, and working on a book about leaders of transnational militant Islamist movements.