The discursive construction of a religious terrorist group identity

Terrorist groups use their own websites in order to recruit novices, distribute propaganda and build a specific identity. In our paper we describe this form of strategic communication from a theoretical perspective and then expose the methodological design and results of a critical discourse analysis by which we examined texts from the websites of Hezbollah, Gama’a al-Islamiyya and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Findings show that the groups use different strategies of identity building. However, the strategies of construction and justification play a major role in each group.