Examining the Japanese Fear of ISIS with Soft Terrorism Concept

 ABSTRACT

Terrorism has emerged as a paramount challenge in recent times. With current terrorist organizations adeptly embracing internet technologies and seamlessly integrating them into their strategies, the landscape of terrorism has evolved into a multifaceted global concern. For instance, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has had a negative impact not only on the citizens of the countries they directly target but also on the psychology of individuals in non-targeted countries through their internet-focused strategies. Despite not carrying out any attacks on Japan, the majority of the Japanese perceive ISIS as a significant threat to their nation. This finding serves as a prime example of how a terrorist organization like ISIS, utilizing internet strategies proficiently, can detrimentally affect individuals in non-targeted countries. This study demonstrates how the soft terrorism concept elucidates the heightened fear of ISIS in Japan. By conducting a Google Trends analysis, the Japanese case is examined in this research. The findings indicate that the soft terrorism activities of ISIS have both short-term and long-term adverse effects on the Japanese, primarily attributed to the dissemination of brutal images and videos posted by ISIS on the internet, as posited by the soft terrorism concept. 

LINK: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ajas/issue/85559/1458636

Cryptocurrency(1)

           In recent years, cryptocurrencies have become quite popular in the world. However, this issue of cryptocurrency reliability is highly controversial.

            In addition cryptocurrency is used in many illegal trade on the deep web. These cryptocurrencies are used for illegal slave trade and drug.

            In addition to all these problems, one of the most important problems is why the cryptocurrency rises and falls. Many scholars have different opinions on this issue. However, the common view is that the ups and downs in bitcoin or cryptocurrencies do not depend on any physical factors.

            However, I think that this idea is not correct. I think that real economic activities play an important role in the rise and fall of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I prepared a data set to test my idea. This data set includes data such as ripple and bitcoin. In addition, this data set includes data such as oil, dollar and gold.

           This data set covers June 2014 to August 2019. The values in this dataset were first translated into Turkish Lira and then normalized in R program. My results were different from the literature.

           Firstly, correlation analysis was performed. According to the results of the correlation analysis, there is a strong correlation between Bitcoin and USD and gold. In addition, there is also a correlation between oil and bitcoin. But this correlation is not strong like USD and gold.

           In addition to correlation analysis, linear regression analysis was performed. The results of linear regression analysis confirmed the results of correlation analysis. In linear regression analysis, USD was chosen as the dependent variable. Bitcoin was chosen as an independent variable.

           Linear regression analysis also shows that there is a significant relationship between Bitcoin and USD.

Protests in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is definitely different from other Chinese cities. Hong Kong was a British colony for more than 150 years - part of it, Hong Kong island, was ceded to the UK after a war in 1842. 

The territory was also popular with migrants and dissidents fleeing instability, poverty or persecution in mainland China.

Then, in the early 1980s, as the deadline for the 99-year-lease approached, Britain and China began talks on the future of Hong Kong - with the communist government in China arguing that all of Hong Kong should be returned to Chinese rule.

The two sides reached a deal in 1984 that would see Hong Kong return to China in 1997, under the principle of "one country, two systems".

As a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system and borders, and rights including freedom of assembly and free speech are protected.

However, the country is currently on the agenda with great uprisings. Protests have continued in Hong Kong since April. The reason for these protests is the act adopted by the Hong Kong parliament. This act would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China. 

The adoption of this law attracted the reaction of many people, especially young people. This reaction quickly turned into protests.

Western media soon began to follow the protests closely. Almost every day, many biased news about protests are shared. For this reason, CNN's news from May to August was examined.

First, the most used words were examined. The results of this research are as follows;

 [1] "after"          "also"           "and"            "are"            "arrested"       "been"           "bill"           "but"            "china"          "city"           "demonstrations"
[12] "extradition"    "for"            "from"           "had"            "has"            "have"           "hong"           "including"      "kong"           "last"           "long"       
[23] "monday"         "more"           "night"          "not"            "one"            "party"          "people"         "police"         "political"      "protest"        "protesters" 
[34] "protests"       "said"           "since"          "sunday"         "than"           "that"           "the"            "their"          "they"           "two"            "was"         
[45] "were"           "which"          "will"           "with"           "yuen"

Then, correlation analysis of some of the most commonly used words was examined. The first of the examined words is the China. The correlation analysis of the "China" word is as follows;

   mainland         mob         unlawful       station     between 
           0.98        0.98               0.98             0.97        0.96             
         movement      unrest                    accusations
               0.80        0.79                           0.76
   

As can be seen, one of the words with the highest correlation with China is unlawful. Then the correlation analysis of the word "police" was examined. The correlation analysis of the "police" word is as follows;

consecutive       march         weeks        people     kok          mong       
1.00                    1.00          1.00          0.96          0.92          0.92                 
demonstrators   extradition       support
          0.79          0.79                  0.79
       island         
         0.78       
As it is seen, the words that have the highest correlation with the word police are people, mong kok (one of the areas where protests continue) and arrest. Finally, the most commonly used words are shown in a graph.

Is there any relationship between terrorism and poverty?

For a long time, international relations scholars have been discussing the causes of terrorism. One of the idea raised as a result of these discussions is poverty.

According to scholars such as Krueger and Maleckova (2003), there is a connection between poverty and terrorism. They support that there is a positive correlation between poverty and terrorism. According to Krueger and Maleckova (2003), if poverty is decreased, terrorism also will be decreased.

As a result of these researches, it was decided to investigate this subject in more detail. A data set was prepared in this direction. This data set included global hunger index, number of terrorist attacks, poverty and inequality numbers.

We got the global hunger index data from unicef, poverty and inequality from World bank and number of terrorist attacks from START.

There are 3 variables in this research. These variables are number of terrorist attacks in the World, global hunger index and poverty less than 1.90 usd.

 Firstly, correlation analysis between these three variables was performed. Based on this correlation analysis, no correlation was found between poverty and terror which is the purpose of the research.

            As can be seen in the table, there is no correlation between terrorism and hunger and poverty. After the correlation analysis, linear regression analysis was performed.

Dependent variable:
	Attack
Hunger	4.413
	(3.859)
Constant	30.843
	(94.052)
Observations	69
R2	0.019
Adjusted R2	0.005
Residual Std. Error	371.463 (df = 67)
F Statistic	1.308 (df = 1; 67)
Note:	*p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

             
                  As could be seen, there is no significant relation between our variables. Linear regression analysis also confirmed the correlation analysis. As can be seen, there is no correlation between terrorism and poverty and hunger. This result is different from many sources in the literature.


REFERENCE:

Krueger, A., & Malečková, J. (2003). Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(4), 119-144. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3216934