Influencing the Influencers

This rare work is an unorthodox but informed approach to understanding and countering terrorism and insurgency narratives.

The author's candid ethnography of communication and organizational communication in progressive Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia is examined within the communication and deception frameworks of the late American information operations scholar Barton Whaley.

Nearly 20 years ago, the author shadowed progressive Muslim influencers throughout Islamic boarding school or pesantren communities, studying their communication practices. This period was marked by repeated terrorist attacks claiming hundreds of lives throughout Indonesia and dangerous fugitives responsible for those attacks hiding throughout the country. These fugitives grew up in Islamic boarding schools, in some of the very communities and regions these case studies are based in. Many were hiding near those schools while the author was there.

The narratives of the progressive Muslim influencers featured in these ethnographic case studies contrast the narratives of terrorism and insurgency that we might imagine or be familiar with today. What is stark about these case studies are the largely conservative, generational audiences in these Islamic boarding school communities that welcomed many of these progressive narratives, even as more extremist narratives that we might characterize as terrorism and insurgency narratives were projected and shared in these same communities among these same audiences. This work explores how and why those communities responded positively to those influencers.

The processes described in this ethnography of communication have not changed much, other than the projection of those same narratives and communication online in greater content.

This book is useful for both researchers and practitioners in understanding and countering influence, in the context of terrorism and insurgency narratives.

Contents:

• Speaking American in Indonesian Islamic Boarding Schools:
  • Proposing Participant-Observer Journalistic Research of Islamic Boarding Schools
  • Recharacterizing My Journalism Background and Practice as an Ethnography of Communication
  • Trying to Understand My Naturally Felt Emotions in Islamic Boarding Schools
  • Applying Self-Phenomenological Method to Recall My Experiences Back Then and Now
• Applying Whaley's Method in Communication and Deception Research and Practice:
  • Analyzing Guerilla Communication Infrastructure and Practices
  • Shifting Toward Concentrated Deception Research
  • Expanding Whaley's Models of Communication and Deception with Some of His Unpublished Manuscripts and Drafts
• Mirroring a Progressive Muslim Proselytizer: Considering How Whaley's Unexpected Players Can Influence Influencers in Islamic Boarding School Communities:
  • The Contribution of Whaley's unpublished Typology of Misperception
  • My First Day as a Hyperpersonal Model of Participant Observation
  • nfluential People Who Like You
  • Experiencing Dimensionality in the Ritual and the Routine of Pengajian
  • The More Different We Appear to Be, the More Dimensional We Make Each Other
  • A Deeply Relational Process
  • Mirroring Each Other
  • The Affordances of This Progressive Pesantren Social Network
  • Moments of Relational Authenticity
• dentifying Whaley's Key Communicators in Closed Islamic Boarding School Communities:
  • Whaley's Research on Chinese Word-of-Mouth Communication
  • Characterizing the Norms of Groups of Relationships Inside Bahrul Ulum and Most Pesantren Communities
  • Freelance Indonesian English teachers (Not Native English Teachers) Network More than Anyone
  • Recent Pesantren Graduates Maintain Dynamic Access with Roles in the Pesantren Gig Economy
  • Foreign NGO Representatives have Unique Access but Often Lack Relationships within Pesantren Communities
  • Localized Small Commercial Services Provided Consistent Access to Pesantren Communities
• Projecting Progressive Influencers from a Pesantren NGO: Instrumentally Developing Whaley's Key Communicators Among Networks of Islamic Boarding Schools:
  • Matchmaking Key Communicators and Making Key Communicators: Concentrating the Direction of Workshops and Planning
  • Projecting Young Progressive Local Muslim Influencers
  • Role modeling Key Communicators
  • Influencing Real and Imagined Perceptions of Progressive Fahmina Personalities and Fahmina Programs
• Making My Own Folklore at the CIA:
  • Navigating Indonesian Pesantren Communities
  • Sobering My Personal Myth

Readership: Graduate students, academics and researchers specialising in Southeast Asian Studies, security/intelligence studies, insurgency and terrorism, media and communication, anthropology and ethnography; policy makers, officials and authorities in intelligence and military services, professionals in competitive/corporate intelligence.