Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast from the American Psychological Association.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna.

We're doing another bonus episode this week on terrorism in the aftermath of the New Zealand mosque attacks.

We'll be exploring what psychological factors

cause a person to commit heinous acts of mass violence, technology's role in spreading extremist

propaganda, and what governments and communities can do to prevent acts of terrorism.

Our guest is Dr. Ari Krooglanski, an APA fellow and distinguished university professor in psychology at the

University of Maryland. He's an expert on terrorism, radicalization, and de-radicalization. Welcome,

Dr. Kuglansky. Good to be here, Caitlin. I first want to start off with New Zealand. These

attacks were clearly designed to go viral because the suspect wore a camera on his head to live stream on Facebook.

And since that time, the video is spread across countless social media platforms despite ongoing efforts to delete copies.

How have the internet and social media changed the dynamics of terrorist groups or lone actor terrorists?

I think it provided a much wider audience that was ever possible.

You know, a very famous terrorism expert, Brian Jenkins,

once quipped that terrorists want a lot of people watching,

not a lot of people dead, because they want the impact of the publicity,

the significance that it accords them.

And the social media, the internet technology allows the publics that watches them, the audiences, to be multiplied by million-fold as compared to the publics that watches them, the audiences, to be multiplied by millionfold as compared

to what was once possible.

So in that sense, it becomes a much more appealing stage, a much more appealing platform

for people who are trying to get attention, get notoriety, get significance through

violence and man.

...