Domestic Terrorism and Digital Media: Planning in Cyberspace

While the concept of sharing information over the internet started as early as the 1960s, the internet as we know it today—a place where anyone can access and disseminate information globally—was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) (CERN 2017). Beginning in 1989, Berners-Lee and CERN worked to release the World Wide Web as public domain in 1993 and develop the first web browser. By 1995, there was worldwide internet connectivity. Internet technology was quickly adopted and diffused throughout social sectors around the world—a system level impact across the entire global, social ecology. The internet, combined with the integration of digital media technologies, such as email, instant messaging, chat rooms, blogs, personal web pages, audio and visual services, and social networking sites (SNSs), created a “placeless” environment, forever changing the fabric of modern society.