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Modern warfare in many cases may be identified as an identity-based conflicts (Münkler, 2005, Kaldor, 2013). So, it is necessary to recognize militant’s identities and key drivers of violence behavior (Kett & Rowson, 2007, Rogers, 2011), to effectively solve the conflicts (Cook-Huffman, 2008). In this context, the analysis of cultural markers of identity and indicators of behavior become an important security task (Watzlawik, 2012).
Among other cultural markers the horror stories spread in the militant’s community may be analyzed. Set of such stories should reflect a general sociocultural discourse of the society, which generates militants, traditional histories and belief systems on morality (Stewart, 1982), death, retribution, and this is the way to describe the relationship between an individual and the community and the community toward otherness in symbolic form (Pišev, 2016).
At the same time the horror stories stable distributed in the closed community may reflect key mobilization narratives, which is motivation for violent behavior, and a base for constructing of corresponding social roles and conflict-producing identity (Stouffer et al, 1949, Cook-Huffman, 2008).
Most militants of illegal armed groups begin their interviews with the declaration “I have nothing to hide, and also nothing to be afraid”, “I am not afraid of anything, because I am right, because I defend my ideals with weapons in my hands” (Kostyuchenko, Yuschenko, & Artemenko, 2018). This is a standard situation for masculine domination groups based on violence expansion (Bourdieu, 2001). But at the same time, their stories are full of various mentions of fear - as a specific emotional state in which they are staying during the war. In some cases, there are structurally separated stories of fear - a kind of scary stories that are told by militants.
Horror war stories spread in the social environment associated with war is a well-known phenomenon (Tropp, 1999). Such stories perform a predominantly adaptive function. On the one hand, these stories spread norms and behavioral patterns (Rachman, 1990), determine the negative group sanctions inherent in the military environment during the war, and on the other – it play a role of the initiation of newcomers to the militant’s community (Herzog, 2017).
Analysis of the horrible stories of militants can help to understand the socio-cultural factors and drivers of conflict, the motivations of members of illegal armed groups, their genesis, group structure and functionality, identity of militants in the new conditions of contemporary warfare (Kelshall, 2019), which is not yet studied enough.
Studying the narratives of members of illegal armed groups in active modern conflicts is a difficult task. Because in today's conflicts it is difficult to find accurate and reliable information, in particular, it is sometimes difficult to separate militants from non-combatants, it is difficult to separate personal narratives from propaganda, it is difficult to accumulate enough observations to classify analyzed narratives, etc. In such conditions, the novel communication tools, in particular, social networks can be useful. Data presented in social networks and communication platforms can be used to collect and verify data, as well as to find and communicate with militants during the active phase of warfare. Utilization of such kind of data requires application of specialized algorithms and problem-oriented approaches (Kostyuchenko, Yuschenko, & Artemenko, 2018). The development and demonstration of the application of such algorithm is a separate goal of this article.
The purpose of this brief overview is to identify the main types of horror stories spread among “L/DPR” (self-declared “Luhansk/Donetsk People’s Republic”, see Fig.1) militants, to analyze their functional purpose and distribution characteristics.