Summary/Abstract:

The proliferation of terrorist propaganda threatens societies worldwide. Yet, we know little about violent extremists' strategy in disseminating their ideologies. Luwei Ying will present a paper that studies the ideological appeals of jihadi groups, among the most prominent contemporary conflict movements, and shows how these groups navigate between religious and secular narratives in response to the fluctuations in their military power. Weaker groups must prioritize their core believers and foreground a more radical religious ideal, while stronger groups seek broader support from more moderate individuals and thus pitch themselves more secularly. Ying illustrates this dynamic with an original database of 87 magazines published regularly by 35 jihadi groups from 1984 to 2019. Further, the research leverages approximately 6 million tweets from 21,000 ISIS-related accounts in 2015 to examine the jihadists' mobilization efforts regarding different audiences. Overall, the article demonstrates that violent groups put more emphasis on their ideological brand when they are militarily weaker.

Bio:

Luwei Ying is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis in 2022. She also received a B.A. in international Politics and a B.A. in Journalism & Communication (with honors) from Tsinghua University.

Ying studies international relations, with a focus on civil conflict and political violence, and quantitative political methodology. Specifically, her research examines how militant organizations propagate ideologies to mobilize, recruit, and exercise control over individual members and how these ideological strategies fit into the groups’ broader military agendas. Corresponding to this focus on ideology, her methodological work advances text-as-data methods that facilitate the measurement of ideology from text corpora. Another set of projects analyze the importance of territorial control for states and non-state groups in conflict. This research spans her work on the determinants of transnational terrorism, the consequences of modern state expansion, as well as the historical legacies of border institutions. Overall, her research provides a more comprehensive understanding of modern warfare and the violent actors involved.

Ying received the 2022 Peace Science Society (International) Walter Isard Award for the best dissertation in Peace Science (over a 2 year period). Her papers have been awarded the Best Paper in International Relations Award, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the 2019 MPSA Conference, and the Best Poster Award (Application) at the PolMeth XXXVII Summer Meeting. Her published work has appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.