Counter-terrorism experts warn that intense media attention to the violent acts of “lone wolf” extremists threatens to encourage emulation. And some fear that the spotlight shined on Internet-based propaganda and bomb-building instruction is making a self-fulfilling prophecy of worries that do-it-yourself terrorism will spread.

“Partly due to the oxygen of publicity given Al Qaeda in the West, Al Qaeda is now a global brand and one that young people in some parts of the world want,” said Ed Husain, a British scholar on Islamic fundamentalism and a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. He sees the 24/7 media blasts on the Tsarnaevs as exaggerating the actual threat and, at the same time, advertising to alienated young men a way of drawing world notice to their causes.

Given the abundance of regional conflicts in which Muslims are often victims, “I’m astonished that more of this hasn’t happened,” Husain said of self-radicalized militants copying the organized terror networks’ tactics. He pointed to religious and ethnic strife in Syria, Libya, Myanmar, Palestine, the Philippines and in the Uighur communities in China as potential catalysts for strikes by the aggrieved against the forces oppressing them or against the world’s most powerful nations…

“It’s a serious problem in today’s world that it is relatively easy to become self-radicalized because of the availability of all this propaganda on the Internet. You can pursue your radical interests without leaving your living room,” said Trenin.