There's a lively discussion going on among some of my favorite bloggers -- Tim at Ubiwar, Will at Jihadica, Aaron at IH, and Rob at Arabic Media Shack -- exploring the real extent of the role of jihadi forums play in recruitment. This question was inspired I think in part on the jihadi forum meltdown back in September. I think that a fair summary of the conclusion can be found at jihadica where Will notes that the forums are dangerous but not for the usual reasons given -- ie, jihadi military manuals, training videos, etc, but rather that
[Jihadi forums] are dangerous because they provide a community to reinforce ideas and an audience to applaud action.
I'll take it one step further and say that we should revisualize the jihadi media information stream. Information streams are generally understood to be expansive, spreading out like links on a fishing net. In fact, information rarely behaves in such an expansive way. Rather, it's a deep well described in a recent National Academies study (via Ubi).
If you pull the plug on the point of the source, the stream stops, but the information (or lack thereof) has minimal effect outside the narrow channel in which it is shared. And so part of the question of influence can be answered with a better understanding of how online social networks really work. And there's plenty of research still to do.
