Social network analysis in the study of terrorism and political violence

The academic community studying terrorism has changed dramatically in the past decade. From a research area that was investigated by a small number of political scientists and sociologists and employed mainly descriptive and qualitative studies that resulted in limited theoretical progress (Schmid and Jongman 1988; Crenshaw 2000), it has in a short time become one of the more vibrant and rapidly developing academic realms in the scholarly world today. Scholars from different branches of the social sciences have engaged in an effort to unravel this phenomenon, introducing new theoretical outlooks, conceptualizations, and methods.