Researchers who study online terrorism and political violence face a broad spectrum of risks to their safety and wellbeing. Awareness of the challenges researchers face in this subdiscipline has remained relatively low for years. Since the launch of Islamic State’s propaganda campaign on the internet, which skilfully deployed scenes of death and dying to influence online audiences, that awareness has increased. Subsequently, some researchers have reported that prolonged exposure to terrorist content can be harmful across many wellbeing dimensions.

This research project aims to determine if exposure to terrorist propaganda may be a factor in causing trauma for researchers or their development of mood disorders. Our study is founded on two research methods: an online survey and a novel experiment. The online survey was completed by a group of recognised terrorism researchers who were asked about their opinions and experiences related to the impact of their research activities on mental health. The experiment used a biofeedback device and an eye-tracker to measure the short-term psychophysiological response of researchers to ordinary content available on the internet (Control Group) and certain types of terrorist propaganda (Experimental Group). The reactions of both groups, primarily their eye fixation and skin conductance, were subsequently compared.