Data collection

Kozinets’ second stage of ‘data collection’ is intended to draw on both interactions by the

researcher with forum members, and the qualitative analysis of content posted by members of the community under examination. With regard to data gathering, Kozinets draws not only on the ethnographic literature, but also the Grounded Theory tradition, as put forward by, notably, Glaser and Strauss,303 _{Strauss and Corbin}304 _{and Charmaz.}305 _{This is a qualitative research methodology} which aims to reverse the normal scientific method by laying out systematic techniques for generating theory inductively from data. Kozinets uses in particular the Grounded Theory terminology of ‘saturation’.306 This refers to a situation in which a researcher finds that the

conceptual codes which have emerged from qualitative data keep on being reinforced by analysis of new data without new codes emerging. In general, grounded theory sets out to produce, via a

process of memo writing and coding, a framework of interlinked codes (axial codes, in Strauss and Corbin’s terminology)307 leading ultimately to a single ‘core category’ which forms the basis for the grounded theory. In the ‘constructivist’ grounded theory of Kathy Charmaz (which has been

strongly criticised by Barney Glaser308 - one of the originators of the method), it is possible to speak of a ‘grounded theory ethnography’.309

In this dissertation data was gathered in a three main ways, informed by the need to develop and test emerging hypotheses, and bounded more by conceptual than ‘spatial’ limitations.

(1) Web searches

Web searches were frequently used to locate content on specific issues (e.g. ‘media jihad’, ‘the intelligence penetration of Al-Hisbah forum’ and so on. However, searches were also used in a more systematic way to produce quantities of analyzable data. As already mentioned, the starting

Arabic?’ This question evolved through the course of a series of searches carried out between March 2008 and August 2010.

The first series of searches – which occurred before the question had been properly formulated - was carried out simply with the broad aim of capturing content which might intuitively be

understood as, in a purely subjective sense, ‘jihadi’, and therefore suitable for generating questions for further research. 310 Terms such as ‘jihadi websites’ (muw!qi‘ jih!diyya), ‘jihadi forum’

(muntada jih!d"), ‘jihadi preparation’, ‘media jihad’ (jih!d al-i‘l!m"), ‘supporters of jihad’ (an!!r al-jih!d), ‘lions of jihad’ (us#dal-jih!d) and the inanimate plural/feminine form of ‘jihadi’ itself (‘ jih!diyya). For each of these terms, the first 50-100 results were manually downloaded. Where sites provided a list of further ‘jihadi’ sites, links to these sites were followed manually in turn.

In September 2009 a more formal series of searches was conducted, this time with the specific intention of investigating how the word ‘jihadi’ is used in Arabic material on the web. These searches were based on the various possible cognates of the word ‘jihadi’ in Arabic (jih!d",

jih!diyya, jih!diyy#n, jih!diyy"n, jih!diyy!t as well as, for comparative purposes, muj!hid("n) and

jih!d). The first aim of this exercise was simply to answer very simple questions about how the term was used in readily accessible Arabic material: is ‘jihadi’ material simply identical to material ‘of jihad’? How far is ‘the jihadi’ relatable to political ideas about ‘jihadism’ in its various forms? Even more basically, does Arabic know ‘jihadi’ as a noun, or solely as an adjective? And if the former, when does ‘jihadi’ apply rather than mujahid? 311

Based on the previous results, searches were also conducted (in June 2010) for particular types of ‘jihadi’ item. These included ‘jihadi’ songs and books. Additionally, Google’s dedicated image search engine was used to locate images returned for various permutations of the word ‘jihadi’ as well as ‘jihad’. This produced a sample of five hundred ‘jihadi’ images. Thirdly, Google’s advanced

search facility was used to conduct a year-by-year search for the occurrence of various possible forms of the word ‘jihadi’ on the web since 1999 paired with those words which the previous search results had suggested to be common. The purpose of this exercise was not precise quantification; and indeed contrast between actual searches conducted in 2008 and 2009 and the number of hits returned for the same terms retrospectively indicated the unreliability of this method. Rather, the purpose was to gain some broad indication of the validity of apparent frequency relationships encountered in previous searches. In particular, the search seemed to confirm that the most common words associated with the word ‘jihadi’ in Arabic are consistently ‘operation’ and ‘nashid’.312

(2) Jihadi literature

While there has been increasing interest in ‘stealing Al Qaida’s playbook’ by exploring the wealth of ‘jihadi’ literature available on strategic and ideological topics, there is – as commented on in the first chapter – a tendency to read such work literally with a view to understanding the ‘strategy’ which is presumed to govern the global jihad movement’s activities. Less common has been to read this literature to obtain an ethnographic understanding of the ‘jihadi current’ as a subcultural

phenomenon in its own right. As a result, it may be suggested that certain works have been

overlooked (for example, Abu ‘Amru Al-Qa‘idi’s A Course in the Art of Recruitment, which I draw on quite heavily, has been derided for its supposed limitations as an actual recruitment course without consideration of the interesting things it reveals about the writer’s background assumptions on society and the natures of different Islamic movements, and the meaning of jihadi engagement online). This material was obtained from various online sources: jihadi forum posts, Web searches and sites such as Scribd and Archive.org.

(3) ‘Webservation’

The third source of information derived from the process of what Daniel Varisco, in a paper cited earlier in this chapter, calls (participant) ‘webservation’ – that is, virtual presence (perhaps

terms of organisation, presentation and organisational functioning of, specifically, ‘jihadi’ forums. In this sense, this form of data gathering was genuinely more akin to ‘observation’ in real life than to textual analysis. Necessarily, however, passive observation of forums readily led into the

acquisition and analysis of text. For this purpose, Firefox’s ‘Scrapbook’ add on was used. This is an ‘offline browser’ programme which automatically downloads linked files, preserving the original link structure. In this way, large sections of forums were obtained for later analysis. A particular use of this programme for this dissertation was to download the complete posting records of selected forum members, who could then be (metaphorically) followed, in order to obtain a relatively naturalistic, in a sense ‘longitudinal’ insight into the experience of participation in a forum community. This was particularly used in the case of the very large forum ‘muslm.net’ which is discussed in chapter 7. Here the experience of engagement as a ‘jihadi’ in this forum was viewed through the case of a particular member, ‘al-Hatf2’. This principle was extended in the instance of a small ‘jihadi’ forum Al-Sayf. This forum was downloaded in its entirety and qualitatitively coded post by post. 313