Assignment #1

I followed the Counter-Terrorism Blog last week, which is a site I visit fairly frequently for news and developments about terrorist groups and activities around the world. According to their own “About” page, the CTB’s target audience is “policymakers in Congress and the Executive Branch, as well as serious students” and the blog aims to provide overnight, real-time news, discussions of long-term trends in counter-terrorism, discussions about international and US law as it pertains to counter-terrorism, and also to act as a gateway to seminars, hearings and other events relevant to the field.

The contributing experts to the CTB are credible sources: academics who have published work, investigative journalists who have distinguished themselves in topics pertinent to security studies, and experts who were former members of the US intelligence community or private security firms. The posts on the blog are written to inform readers, however it can be difficult to follow if the post’s author does not provide enough background, as is sometimes the case. The blog writes to an informed audience as well, keeping readers up to date with new developments. The blog is updated very frequently, usually multiple times a day by different contributors, although lulls in the news cycle can sometimes produce a day or several days lapse in new or important content. Content usually consists of text, although pictures and links to videos are semi-frequent. Each contributor’s post usually also links back to a website of their own, if they have one. In general, the posts are well written, although there are occasional typographical errors by certain contributors. A few posts sometimes read as though English were not the writer’s first language.

The CTB is funded by the Counter-Terrorism Foundation, which was set up to provide resources and money to the Blog and to its contributing experts. This allows for experts to be “embedded” in other countries with or without the US military, allowing the Blog to provide accurate and on location stories from the front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq, although the Blog is not limited to covering those two countries and in fact focuses much of its time on North Africa and Southeast Asia.