The Word and the Bullet: Out-Grouping and Threat Framing as Predictors of Islamic State Targeting, 2015–2020
The Word and the Bullet: Out-Grouping and Threat Framing as Predictors of Islamic State Targeting, 2015–2020
Gillian Kant Talip Alkhayer Timo Kivimäki Christoph Weisser a Center for Statistics, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germanyb BrainBridge Solutions Ltdc Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Bath, Bath, UKGillian Kant is Senior Data Scientist at Finanz-Data GmbH and researcher at the Center for Statistics, Georg-August Universität Göttingen. He holds a PhD in Applied Statistics, with a research focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP), machine learning, and statistical modelling. His work spans topic modelling, sentiment analysis, and AI-generated content detection, with applications in financial markets, social media analysis, and forensic data science. He has co-authored multiple publications in leading journals and conferences, including Social Network Analysis and Mining, International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, and ACL. His contributions include STREAM, a user-friendly topic modelling framework, and SIRITVIS, a visualization tool for analysing social media discourse.Talip Alkhayer is founder and director of BrainBridge Solutions Ltd. He has a PhD from the University of Bath and he works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, conflict forecasting, and peacebuilding. He collaborates with leading international organisations such as the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) programme, bringing together social science expertise and computational methods to support risk assessment and conflict prevention.Timo Kivimäki is Professor of International Relations at the University of Bath (UK) and Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Sejong Institute (Seoul, Republic of Korea). Professor Kivimäki has held professorships at the University of Helsinki, University of Lapland, and at the University of Copenhagen. He has also been director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Copenhagen) and the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Helsinki.Christoph Weisser is a Technical Lead in Data Science with a PhD in Applied Statistics from Georg-August University Göttingen, alongside two Master degrees from the University of St Andrews and the University of Oxford. He has co-authored various publications in leading journals and international conferences, advancing research at the intersection of Statistics and Data Science.