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April 26th, 2024 | 7:55 PM ET

The Recruiting Challenge

Posted: October 25th, 2015

By John Cohen

John Cohen is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. He has over 30 years of experience in law enforcement and homeland security, serving as Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, as well as the Counterterrorism Coordinator at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Cipher Brief spoke with John Cohen, Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and Former Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security. He explained that terrorist organizations use social media as a tool to connect with a target audience comprised of individuals who share “common psychological and life experience profiles” and who are searching for meaning in their life.

The Cipher Brief: What are some of the main online platforms that extremists use to recruit Westerners? Who is their target audience?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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Categorized as:International

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