Postmodernism and Networks of Cyberterrorists

• Authors: Jonathan Matusitz
• Venue: Journal of Digital Forensic Practice
• Year: 2008

This article exemplifies the very notion that cyberterrorist networks are postmodern types of networks, where no leadership is needed, no center exists, and where communication is ultra-flexible and quasi-limitless. As opposed to conventional terrorist organizations, with their hierarchical structures that are vertically designed, cyberterrorist organizations are actually not organizations. They do not exhibit an intrinsically "group" or "design" nature. Rather, they are volatile and unexpected, a very postmodern attribute. The postmodern concept of hyperreal is described in this analysis. "Hyperreal" suggests a "reality" that supersedes the world. As such, cyberspace is the new public sphere and it is postmodern; it treasures the concept of the "public" while disengaging it from any particular time or place. As a result, the postmodern map of cyberspace becomes the totality itself, superseding the world. Hyperreal also implies that cyberspace enables the "self" to become fluid, a flow of identity that converges under the sign of the virtual environment. As such, this article purports itself to define postmodernism and to discuss its application to cyberspace with respect to (1) Baudrillard's hyperreal/real continuum, (2) the fragmentation, fluidity, and decentralization of the self, (3) postmodernism and cyberterrorism, (4) the organizational challenges faced by cybersecurity and law enforcement agents, and (5) the absence of leadership in cyberterrorist networks.