The digitalization of terror: ransom economies, digital impunity, and the TikTok banditry phenomenon in Nigeria

The increasing incorporation of digital technologies into political violence raises questions about how physical coercion, economic extraction, digital visibility, and governance interact. This conceptual article examines these relationships through Nigerian banditry, kidnapping-for-ransom, and digitally mediated communication. Using a theory-building conceptual design based on interpretive synthesis of interdisciplinary scholarship, the article develops the Digital Terror Ecosystem as an overarching framework connecting physical and digital dimensions of violence. Three concepts are distinguished: Digital Terror Ecosystem, integrating digital infrastructures, coercion, economic extraction, symbolic communication, and governance; Platformed Banditry, conceptualizing the potential appropriation of digital platforms for visibility, communication, intimidation, identity construction, and audience formation; and Digital Impunity, describing a governance condition that may enable digitally mediated violence where institutional, regulatory, and platform capacities are limited or fragmented. TikTok is treated illustratively rather than as a systematically analysed empirical object. Four theoretical propositions address visibility and symbolic authority, digital impunity and network persistence, digital visibility and ransom economies, and influence beyond immediate territories. These propositions remain subject to empirical testing. The article contributes a framework for examining how digital infrastructures may interact with violent and economic power while preserving distinctions among banditry, organized crime, terrorism, and insurgency.