The Media Mujahideen: How ISIS uses social media and online networks as a recruitment ground for radicalisation and propaganda
Aisling Crabbe
Supervisor: Dr. Richard Rogers
Introduction: The Social Media Warzone
The traditional physical perception of war still exists, there are still ravaged land masses, soldier deployment and apperception graphs on the number of daily civilian casualties broadcast nightly by newscasters. Although weaponry has developed along the way; leaping from swords to guns to nuclear technology, a classical idea of what constitutes a war and its dichotomy of opposing sides (the unambiguous good and bad combatants to support) remains. However, with the explosive expansion of social media and online networks in recent years, the availability of access to warfare has never been more attainable to the average citizen.
Live-streams of the Arab Spring uprising on Twitter; along with Syrian-run survivor channels ; in addition to live-streaming videos of executions are dissipated throughout the world
1 2
wide web on various social network platforms. This has led to an unprecedented rise of ‘brand caliphate ’, a heraldry under which modern terrorist organisations such as ISIS utilise 3 smartphone accessibility, new media technology and social media dissipation platforms to create and curate their own self-projected online identity. This identity is completely owned and curated by the group. New media platforms allow them to spread a rapid amount of favourable propaganda content and information globally without having to go through channel barriers of classical media (radio, newspaper, television etc). The affordances of anonymity, global rapid dispersion and private messaging are all utilised by the group in various ways that will be discussed. This thesis focuses on the newly emerging facet of war of utilising social media platforms to spread propaganda and radicalising content, with a focus on ISIS’ utilisation in particular. ISIS is one of the first social media terrorist groups that have fully come to grips with the various new media outlets and wholly exploit them to their own advantage to spread terror and recruit members at a speed never before witnessed. The agitprop and propaganda run on the organisations’ social media and can be streamed to a mass audience, the likes of which haven’t been available before. The ability to directly stream
1Bana Alabed. (@AlabedBana).” Twitter, 13 Dec. 2016, twitter.com/AlabedBana
2“Graphic Video: ISIS Beheads 19 Kurdish Dissidents in Gruesome Mass Execution.” AMN - Al-Masdar News | 17 , زﻮﯿﻧ رﺪﺼﻤﻟا Oct. 2017,
www.almasdarnews.com/article/graphic-video-isis-beheads-19-kurdish-dissidents-gruesome-mass-execution/
3The extensive media and propaganda marketing conducted by ISIS (Monroe, B. “Brand Caliphate and recruitment between the genders” Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive. September 2016.)
content into the private screen of a global audience is a new weapon of war and one that is quickly directing the narrative of global warfare.
The definition of social media will be taken as: “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content ”. There now exists capabilities for global dispersion 4 and communication that in previous generations were solely reserved for international media outlets and are now freely available on online networks accessible to the average person . 5 And with the expansive global growth of social media, there has never been a more globally interactive time to live in. War, conflict and the combat insurgents have never been so tangible or accessible to communicate with for people across the world. State conflict has transformed itself from a nation-dictated and classical media controlled space into a streaming, discussion and online based disunion. In recent years, the creation of a second online battleground has been cultivated, one in which any citizen with a smartphone can become an integral part of the conflict.
The accessibility of war has meant that the grounds for content streaming and global communication has risen to an unprecedented level. Insurgency groups saw and took advantage of this accessibility long before political states realised the power social media wielded on the battleground . The ability to talk, debate and influence the discussion of a 6 conflict on a global platform with others outside the warzone meant that for the first time, virtual mass enlightenment became a reality. Morozov foretold that the government and big 7 media will lose their podium as the sole distributors of information with the rise of social media in 2009 . The exclusive distribution method that social network platforms afford the 8 organisation give them full control on censorship and bias. In the digital age, citizens now have access to a whole wealth of news, information and commentary that was impossible to
4Van Dijck, J., The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media, Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp 4.
5Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017.
Kindle Ed. Introduction
6Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017.
Kindle Ed. The Recruit.
7Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017.
Kindle Version - Introduction
8Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
imagine before . Everyone can now seek out and become involved in a global war that 9 before was completely unattainable, save for television, radio and newspaper mass media groups reporting on the issue. No longer was Walter Cronkite delivering news to American families about the ‘living room war ’ on events that had happened days previously in 10 Vietnam and were only now coming through from government intelligence. Whereas now, war and conflict have trending hashtags, livestreams and social media channels that a user can log in and be part of instantaneously. The ubiquitous nature of smartphone ownership has meant a rapid assemblage of what Shirky dubbed the “self-documenting public ” that allows 11 communication and information dissemination to occur at lightning fast speeds and register all facets of life.
In contrast with first generation utilisation of the internet as a passive ground for viewing and information research, today’s generation actively shapes, creates and interacts with the web every second; creating their own identity web brand and shaping social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook with self-made content. Today, a user can’t simply ‘access’ media without automatically being nudged in some ways to modify it by uploading images, write content or interact with friends or followers. No longer is media an unchangeable object like a newspaper or photograph . There are very few, if any barriers to 12 entry on most of these platforms, apart from a unique email address that can be created within minutes. There is little in the way of checks and balances on the content uploaded (due
mainly to the sheer amount of data being transferred). The birth of the biggest social networks such as Reddit and Twitter heralded the growth of the free-speech debate online. While with the best of intentions initially, this led to an expected norm of absolute freedom of
9Ibid.
10The Vietnam War is often credited as the first ‘living room war’ due to its accessibility on reporting directly to American families through their television sets. During the war most middle class homes owned a set and Cronkite was one of the most familiar and trusted news readers present to the American public. His criticism of Lyndon Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War is historically viewed as the marker for public opinion turning against the conflict (Bowden, Mark. “When Walter Cronkite Pronounced the War a 'Stalemate'.” The New
York Times, The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/opinion/walter-cronkite-war-stalemate.html & Pach,
Chester. “Lyndon Johnson's Living Room War.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 May 2017,
www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/opinion/lyndon-johnson-vietnam-war.html.)
11Shirky, Clay. “The Twitter Revolution: More than Just a Slogan.” Prospect Magazine, 6 Jan. 2010,
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-twitter-revolution-more-than-just-a-slogan.
speech on the web, resulting in outcry when controls and regulations are attempted to be 13 installed into place on these platforms now. 14
The twenty-first century war has thusly now been constructed in an online sphere and the issue of how terrorist actors such as The Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria is came to utilise these online networks as a method of radicalisation and recruitment will be further examined in this thesis. ISIS as a group is one of the strongest terrorist organisations to utilise social media . Literature evidence gives credence to the fact that they are one of the most articulate 15 and adept groups across social media . 16 (Brief overview of each chapter)
ISIS Logging In
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), simply the Islamic State (IS) or the Arabic ‘Daesh’ is a jihadist terrorist organisation formed under Salafism, a fundamentalist Sunni Islam belief system. It remains one of the most prominent branch organisations to secede from Al-Qaeda (AQI). Its father organisation, AQI was established in 1988 , best known for responsibility 17 of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The organisation's leader Osama Bin Laden launched a 2004 uprising against US forces that led to the group enjoying some moderate success in
establishing regional pockets of land. However, the group’s suffered punctures to its power stronghold when then leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US airstrike in 2006 . 18 This, coupled with the deluge of US-occupation afterwards meant Al-Qaeda membership was heavily depleted and sparse on the ground. However, although low on numbers, the group remained steadfast in its goals. After the withdrawal of the US army from Iraq, a
semi-formed dichotomy of Al-Qaeda and what would soon become ISIS (ISI) led a 13Russell, Jon. “Reddit Bans Five Harassing Subreddits, Its Trolls Respond Exactly As You'd Expect.”
TechCrunch, TechCrunch, 11 June 2015, techcrunch.com/2015/06/11/quelle-surprise/
14Paul Booth’s book also provides further arguments on the ethical issues online networks such as Reddit face with hate-speech and debate
online. His discussion on privacy laws in regards to pornographic or nude content provide a clear cut idea of the need for regulation without any actual practical plan on how to implement it on these platforms save for blanket banning. Although this thesis is not concerned with sexual imagery, his ideas on the instability of online content regulation provide some excellent groundwork on the idea of how online spheres are struggling to regulate themselves: Booth, Paul (depaul University Usa). Controversies in Digital Ethics. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017.
15Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017.
Kindle Ed. The Recruit.
16Shane,S and Hubbard, B. “ISIS displaying a deft command of varied media,” New York Times. 30 August 2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/middleeast/isis-displaying-a-deft-command-of-varied-media.html. 17Bergen, Peter L. The Osama Bin Laden I Know: an Oral History of Al-Qaeda's Leader. Free Press, 2006. Pp 75.
18Nance, Malcolm & United States House Committee on Homeland Security, Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp 10.
successful claim to power. New leader of the union, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi oversaw the 19 installation of a brutal Sunni regime across Iraq, and in April 2013, flushed with the acquisitional success of the region he declared the birth of ISIS . 20
ISIS is a fanatical fundamentalist Islamic group, self-described the true “caliphate upon the prophetic methodology ”. The group justifies actions through selective interpretation of 21 Hadith scripture and Sharia Law excerpts. ISIS believe a war and establishment of an
independent Islamic state that reverts back to the original fundamental teachings of the Quran is the only way to spread the word of Islam and take back the land they see as rightfully their own. The announcement of the organisation’s conception caused a schism between the newly-declared ISIS faction and the previously supportive Al Qaeda. The loss of Al Qaeda backing did little to impede the dominating spread of the group across regions. Expansions throughout northern and eastern pockets of Syria were swift and the Iraqi army lost huge 22 areas during the conflict. The capture of Mosul served as a huge victory to ISIS and was one of the first examples of celebration and resonation on the group’s social media . Baghdadi’s 23 appointment as caliph of the new state was posted online in an audio recording , a beginning 24 mark on the utilisation of the web that would later come to define the terrorist organization.
ISIS’ work on social media especially has marked them out as new media vanguards in terms of online recruitment. They have carved out a niche as a terrorist organisation most versed and masterful of using new media as a method to spread propaganda and as a recruitment ground . Utilizing the web and incredibly popular social networking platforms such as 25 Facebook and Twitter, along with deep web encrypted chat-rooms such as Telegraph ISIS has managed the delicate balance between one on one personalised conversation and huge
19Shadid, Anthony. “Iraqi Insurgent Group Names New Leaders.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 May 2010,
atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/iraqi-insurgent-group-names-new-leaders/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.
20GlobalPost, Qaeda in Iraq confirms Syria's Nusra is part of network, Agence France-Presse, 9 April 2013. ( Archived from the original on 13 May 2013:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130513193707/http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130409/qaeda-iraq-confirms-syrias-nusra-part-network)
21Frampton, Martyn. “The New Netwar: Countering Extremism Online”. Policy Exchange, 2017. Pp 6. 22N
ance, Malcolm & United States House Committee on Homeland Security, Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp 10
23Christopher M. Blanchard, Carla E. Humud, Kenneth Katzman, and Matthew C. Weed, The “Islamic State” Crisis and U.S. Policy (CRS Report No. R43612) (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015), http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R43612.pdf. Pp 19. 24Nance, Malcolm & United States House Committee on Homeland Security, Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp 11.
25Government Publishing Office. 2016. ISIS Online: Countering Terrorist Radicalization and Recruitment on the Internet and Social Media. (2016). https: //www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-114shrg22476/content-detail.html
propaganda campaigns simultaneously. The radicalisation of both Muslims and non-Muslims have had some startlingly effective results globally, with an ill-prepared West unable to cope with the amount of online radicalisation they faced. At its peak, ISIS was recruiting nearly two thousand foreign volunteers a month in 2016 , with individuals from over a hundred 26 counties renouncing their citizenship to fight with ISIS, there has been a mass migration to the conflict zone areas like Syria and Iraq since 2011 . For nearly three years, ISIS controlled 27 land that at its height was equal to the size of Britain, with a population estimated at twelve million people . For the vast majority of this newly recruited population, many of them made 28 the journey to the State without ever having met a jihadi soldier in real life . Alberto 29
Fernandez, Coordinator of the Centre for the Strategic Counterterrorism Communications in the US State Department remarked on the momentous rise of ISIS online as the first example of the issue of a “first social media war ” fought. The group’s narrative portrays ISIS as an 30 agent of change and one that particularly points to an apocalyptic ending or oncoming of 31 those that are not true believers of the State and values. This targeted notion coupled with the mass dispersal of constant streams of media and content on social media platforms has led to a complete submersion of imagery, text and videos on various platforms (further discussed in Chapter Two). ISIS has managed to utilise social network algorithms and strategize
themselves as ‘brand caliphate’ to a global audience using new media as a major component. Although not fully realised as an essential tactical tool, researchers, politicians and potential everyday targets must now be educated to fully realise the adverse effects ISIS and new media have on their online and offline society. The overarching research question of this thesis is to examine and advise on the best approach to examine social media usage by ISIS moving forward.
26Reuters. “Is the Number of Foreign Fighters Joining ISIS Really Plummeting?” Newsweek, 9 June 2016,
www.newsweek.com/isis-foreign-fighters-90-percent-iraq-syria-decreasing-general-claim-453741.
27Nance, Malcolm & United States House Committee on Homeland Security, Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp 6.
28Callimachi, Rukmini. “The ISIS Files: When Terrorists Run City Hall.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2018,
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepag e&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.
29Nance, Malcolm & United States House Committee on Homeland Security, Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp 36.
30Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017.
Kindle Ed. The Recruit.
Understanding Online Radicalisation: Literature Review
As such, an analysis and discussion on the importance and place social media has on audiences needs to be discussed more fully by the scholars of new media. Although social networks are recognised as the propaganda and radicalisation ISIS mouthpiece, there is little in the way of academic examinations of how persuasive this medium can be and how the platforms utilised afford certain benefits to the radicalisation process in their own way. Awan et al. briefly touch on the problem, citing that the latent linking of the rise of social media and the global online radicalisation movement was due to governing bodies not fully
understanding the complete submersion social media was having on everyday people’s lives and associating that with the ease of ISIS being able to connect and be with recruitee targets in their phone, computer and daily lives. “The current rapidly shifting media saturated environment characterized by a set of somewhat paradoxical conditions of, on the one hand, ‘effects without causes’ … yet, on the other, as profound connectivity through which places, events, people and their actions and inactions, seem increasingly connected ”. 32
ISIS and previous terrorist organisations (to a lesser degree) had come to realise the potential online networks had for their cause far before any government took social media seriously. The inability to fully examine and stop the initial usage of terrorist organisations utilizing the internet as a recruitment and radicalisation ground allowed the seeds to be sown, and let the movements grow . Platform analysis of ISIS’ most utilised online networks is woefully 33 underrepresented across all policy reports reports, and a discussion of this and why a certain platform is chosen by the group and flourishes there will be further investigated in a Platform Analysis section. An examination of Morozov’s work, with close reference to his online debate with internet technologist Clay Shirky will be set side by side with the ISIS social media strategy throughout the literature review.
32Awan, A., Hoskins, A. and O’Loughlin, B., “Radicalisation and Media: Connectivity and Terrorism in the New Media Ecology”. London: Routledge, 2011. pp 5.
33Awan et al. further examines how the lack of initial action by country policy makers led to the growth and festering of the online terrorist networks to fully examine social media and establish and test a PR strategy for online radicalisation: “uncertainty about how discourses of radicalisation operate in the new media ecology is the condition for discourses about radicalisation to proliferate”
Awan, A., Hoskins, A. and O’Loughlin, B., “Radicalisation and Media: Connectivity and Terrorism in the New Media Ecology”. London: Routledge, 2011. pp 7.
Three research questions will be discussed with reference to Morozov and a number of new media scholars opinions. These questions will be: why did ISIS chose to work online and how did it benefit them as a radicalisation and propaganda dissemination territory? Here, n examination of the trajectory of ISIS social media usage and its history will be looked at. Secondly, the importance of the study of social media usage by the Caliphate in the field of new media; why should we give it credence? And finally, how has this study and research taken place in new media up till now? The last section will be of premium importance as it will shape our understanding of what has worked and what has not, and indeed, what needs to be changed on and improved moving forward. If the overarching research question of this thesis is to examine and advise on the best approach to examine social media usage by ISIS moving forward, it is critical to see what has already been done and worked on, and indeed, what has succeeded.
The Trajectory of Social Media Usage - ISIS Logging In
Social media as a tool to facilitate radicalisation was established initially by Al Qaeda and later ISIS perfected it as a method of circumventing classic media as a communication tool and directly reaching the group’s target audience . The concept of utilisation of the internet 34 as a method to spread extremist propaganda was first analysed by Bruckman and Ludlow in the early 90s , but only gained traction in the 2000s as a comprehensible researchable 35
viability . The period from 2010 to the present day can be viewed in some way as the Golden 36 Era of the study on online radicalisation, as the majority of works produced on the area have come from the previous eighteen month period.
Many academics in new media point to the convenience of social media as a the main reason for the modern day surgency and interaction with global conflict from the West and interest in the conflicts outside states are involved with . The ability to be part of a conflict and 37 interact with those on the ground through a computer or smartphone screen means that a new era of new media and modern warfare has unfolded through the ability to be stationary but 34See page XX
35Amy S. Bruckman, “Gender Swapping on the Internet,” in Peter Ludlow, ed., High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996
36Pearson, Elizabeth. “Online as the New Frontline: Affect, Gender, and ISIS-Take-Down on Social Media.” Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism, May 2017, pp. 1–25., doi:10.1080/1057610x.2017.1352280.
feel like an activist and involved on the ground . Although ISIS draws power from its geographical claim to regions and sectors of Iraq and Syria, many of its media work is produced and transmitted from a number of autonomous districts globally. This was
something underappreciated by many political bodies such as the U.S Homeland Security 38 that struggles to differentiate how the group draws power from holding physical land; while also excelling in its ability to be globally present through their media distribution.
ISIS as a group has always erred on the side of caution in understanding that proliferation on social media can be a double-edged sword. Farewell presented that although social media gives access to the group, it also meant that protecting the locations, plans and identities of their leadership was made difficult. Earlier terrorist groups used to rely on hand courier to deliver changes to strategy to avoid leakage. Other groups relying on social media for 39 communication learnt the issues full access of content can have. Morozov exemplifies this citing then Belarus protests, where the government authorities began tracking and monitoring By_mob, the LiveJournal utilised by the protesters to alert members of a planned meeting . 40 Following on from this photos of protesters were disseminated to identify them. Although mass communication heralded the growth of instantaneous connection, it also gave way to an openness and subsequent ability to monitor all actions.
Morozov’s theory of the Information Cascade comes into play with the utilisation of social media by ISIS. Under Morozov , even if citizens do not believe that change is possible, they 41 will join a large protest or call to action if faced with the possibility under the assumption that such a vast number of people cannot be incorrect. In light of this, a comparison can be drawn between the huge number of radicalised supporters and defectors the Islamic State drew being due in part to the huge social media presence it thrived upon. That is, although some people may not have been fully convinced in the absolute success of the Caliphate, the increase in radicalisation speak from users they follow or friends would have somewhat
38Countering Violent Islamist Extremism: The Urgent Threat of Foreign Fighters and Homegrown Terror House Committee on Homeland Security: Hearing Before the Committee on Homeland Security, House of Representatives, 114th Cong., 1st sess., February 11, 2015, http://homeland.house.gov/hearing/hearing-countering-violent-islamist-extremism-urgent-threat-foreign-fighters-and-homegrown 39Farwell, J. How ISIS uses social media. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2014.
40Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web.
41Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
influenced them to find out more and support ISIS under the assumption that so many of their social circle can be wrong.
Why study ISIS’ usage of social media?
Morozov wrote a foresighted opinion on the importance of studying social media emergence in 2009 . He cites that although some governments had already begun to view the technology 42 network usage as a benign threat, it will only remain so as long as it it solely used by the hands of pro-western and pro-democracy forces. However, Morozov also states that it was only a matter of time before terrorist organisations such as the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood latched on to the digital media and utilise it themselves for the spreading of pro-radical and pro-terrorist usage. Nearly ten years later we are truly witnessing the manifestation of Morozov’s prediction, with ISIS fully exploiting all areas of social media and digital
technology to spread a campaign of terror globally. If Morozov’s words had been taken with more creedence and gravity, would the Caliphate have taken control and utilised the
worldwide social network with such ease? We may never know and a decade later it is too late to revert back. However, it is not too late to circumvent this operation going forward. The utilisation of social media as a tool for radicalisation and propaganda still remains in its infancy stages, having not been fully exploited (and indeed we may not know what fully exploited truly means before it happens) universally by terrorist organisations. The question of why it is important to study and examine ISIS’s social media usage will be detailed here, with reference to the opinions and debates of the field happening currently.
The wave of fear that their own country’s citizens will fall victim to radicalisation has led to an increase in investment for data set results by think tanks and governmental policy bodies that better support the theory that social media is one of the main sources of ISIS recruitment and radicalisation. However, the study as a whole remains in its infancy stage of fully
established research. As noted above it remains at the early stages of querying and studying the idea of digital radicalisation. For many researchers in this topic, the lack of conclusive evidence on whether social media can act as the sole ground for radicalisation to occur 43
42Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web.
43Meleagrou-Hitchens and Kaderbhai, “Research Perspectives on Online Radicalisation”, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), King’s College London, 2017. Pp 19.
hinders the the examination of New Media’s utilisation by ISIS. Why does this matter? Lack of investment in the area means that conclusive evidence cannot be yielded and proven as a factor. This is problematic as it is then easier for political bodies to ignore the danger society faces as they can undercut the lack of conclusive evidence that new media is an active tool used in the radicalisation process. However, from the few studies that have been supported and completed yielding positive results reflecting this , there is a change in the mindset. This 44 thesis is being completed in the changing momentum of this period, when political bodies are supportive but not fully understanding the change. This is why the question of what needs to be done and how to act swiftly is so tightly focused on throughout, although social media is a fast moving platform of study, there remains little time to ensure and explain all facets of digital radicalisation to all parties. Any halt in movement is hindering none but ourselves, as we wait ISIS and other terrorist organisations grow in numbers through their deft execution of online radicalisation.
Shirky cited Morozov’s perhaps overly-optimistic expectation that social media will herald the introduction of democratisation in society . Nearly a decade later, we are now ironically 45 witnessing a complete contradictory application of this idea with ISIS using social media as a method to spread their reign of terror and zealously recruit new troops to fight on their
frontline in order to combat any hopes of control of the areas claimed in Syria and Iraq and perhaps long-term restore order and democratisation.
Postman concedes that the moral standpoint of new media dissemination of information can change over time and develop (e.g Gutenberg printing press was derided in its time for the 46 problematic rise of place it put the availability of layman interpretation in the Christian hierarchy. The availability of the bible to every household led to the breakdown of barriers between the church and worshippers.). Although globalised communication has had major benefits in nation-state conversation and information distribution, it has marked a major change in how we as a population consume media and how users are now more of a part of
44Awan, A., Hoskins, A. and O’Loughlin, B., “Radicalisation and Media: Connectivity and Terrorism in the New Media Ecology”. London: Routledge, 2011., Walid et al. “# FailedRevolutions: Using Twitter to study the antecedents of ISIS support.” 2015. & Morgan, J, and J Berger. “The ISIS Twitter Census Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter.” The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World , 2015.
45Shirky, Clay. “The Net Advantage.” Prospect Magazine, 5 Jan. 2010,
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-net-advantage.
the interaction and interpretation of it. Just as the printing press broke barriers down between church and congregation with access, so too has new media allowed information to change from a state-controlled mass media filter to one accessible to all with an smartphone. Why is this problematic? Surely access to all sides of the story provides the most interactive
experience? Although this ideally would be true, issues such as algorithm echo-chambers, further discussed in Chapter Two, mean that more often than not, people tend to seek out validation for their own standpoints, rather than actively searching for an unbiased source of information. New Media and online networks were heralded as a liberation tool for people to access their own information without traveling through the filtration system of mass media . 47 However, in a paradoxical turn of events, the opposite has come true with the filtration of new media and online networks algorithms meaning that users see less and less of actual unbiased information, and more of their own echo-chamber of similar viewpoints parroted back to them in order to keep them on the platform for the longest degree of time. The questions of why this is a problematic issue is further touched upon in Chapter Three.
Morozov illustrates the reasoning behind the importance of studying the ISIS social media development by citing the Belarusian flash mob counter-culture as a reaction to the 2006 elections . The utilisation of social media and messaging as a method of dispersing 48 information about gathering locations and timing would have been near impossible to imagine in pre-digital decades. Carrying on from this, the employment of social media from ISIS is a new method of globalised recruitment and propaganda sharing. The importance of smartphone connectivity in the Belarus protests as a way of transferring information quickly; Egyptian combatants using encryption as a circumvention method to avoid Mukhabarat detection or Brazilian ecologists visualising the spread of deforestation through Google Maps
were all borne out of new media developments. 49
Although these are far more altruistic usages of new media, there is a history of terrorist organisation utilisation. Morozov warned that Western powers should have been aware of the
47Stanfill, M., The Interface as Discourse: the Production of Norms Through Web Design. New Media & Society. 2015. Pp 1065. 48Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web.
49Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
alluring tug social media (as his time of writing) would have on socially dissident groups 50 and extremists. These groups and those that are radicalised by them usually identify as outliers to the system and are typically denied a place in the normal media sphere, whether due to an autocratic government denying criticism; or the group’s extremist views and use of violence. The affordances of social media, viral connectedness, global reach and anonymity are all things that outer-reach groups benefit from.
ISIS is not the first Islamic fundamentalist group to fully forsee the potential new media has in recruitment and propaganda prospects. According to International Institute for Strategic Studies, Lashkar-e-Taiba, a South Asian based Islamic militant terrorist group gathered information and intelligence through Google Earth to track and control their tactical assault on Mumbai in 2008 . Later on, I-Shabaab, the militant East African fundamentalist 51
organisation utilitised Twitter as a method to publicise their 2013 attack on the shopping centre in Nairobi . 52 Abu Bakr Naji, a jihadist PR-Strategist advises that in order for the Islamic extremist movement to enhance their visual reputation globally, they must first of all ensure that the “halo of deception ” that has been created by the West of invincibility be 53 destroyed. That is, to avoid having to go through Western mass media channels that would destroy the puritan message of the group through perceived biases. The best possible method for doing this is to utilize social media, which was only in its infancy stages at that time of his writing the Management of Savagery, the seminal document published in 2004 designed to devise a PR blueprint for the Al-Qaeda group. Creating and publishing content would give them the reigns of control for their public image for the first time. No longer needing to rely on classical media for distribution and publicity, social media would mark a turning point for the group that could now directly stream their content to a target audience.
However, it is imperative that the importance of ISIS being the first group of its kind to spread their message through social media not be underestimated. The group remains the first of its kind to grow an an unimaginable rate through social media. It is important to study and 50Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web.
51Farwell, J. How ISIS uses social media. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2014. 52Farwell, J. How ISIS uses social media. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2014. 53Bakr Naji, Abu
(Tr: William McCants). “The Management of Savagery”. Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, 23 May 2006. Pp 13-16
research to better understand just how this strategy was achieved? Why did it work so well? And is there a long term danger of social media as a propaganda and radicalisation tool by other terrorist groups? This last question is of premium importance as up till now,
governmental and technology industry response has been blurred and disorganised in its approach as it how best to tackle this issue. The importance of establishing a strong policy to combat this approach lies in understanding the background as to why the strategy succeeded in the first place, not just a blanket solutionist answer that is applied in the hopes of it working.
The importance of studying ISIS social media utilisation also comes in the form of directly being able to develop combative measures to their strategy through better understanding. Morozov discusses that although digital activism came with a deluge of benefits, it also lost one of the assets of analogue activism: the lack of interconnection and dependency . In the 54 past, gaining access to one member’s communication meant little, the entire group could still proceed knowing that only one node was removed. However, with the rise of contact lists and group messaging as a means of communication, accessibility to a single member’s inbox puts the entire organisation web at risk. The ability to accurately study and develop circumvention methods to ISIS’ communication network could be key to their eradication. The inspection of how the group’s strategy is executed could pinpoint to how best to tackle and combat through new media methods such as platform censorship, tracking or prediction of actions based on activity. Within the scope of new media analytics, this has already been shown as an accurate method of prediction. A machine algorithm study by a group of Stanford students recently predicted a Facebook user’s sexual orientation with a 91.02% accuracy level . This method 55 of data-mining could also be employed by the alt-right or a totalitarian government as a technique to identify homosexual individuals to target and intimidate. Further research into the most likely recruittee targets, or perhaps the usual pattern and behaviour of those in the process of jihadi recruitment could be installed as a data-mining technique to track future targets and halt the process through identification and the redirect method that will be further discussed in this thesis.
54Morozov, E., How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, December 2009.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web.
How has ISIS social media been studied?
Specific literature on the use by ISIS of social media is sparse. Data sets and logistical studies are even more meager. Although some concessions have to be given due to timing, that is, that we are only now equipped with enough content and social media measurability to gauge evidence and results, overall new media has not fully embraced the study of ISIS and social media. ISIS and previous terrorist organisations came to realise the potential online networks had for their cause far before any government or policy maker took social media seriously. There was an inability to fully examine and stop the initial usage of terrorist organisations utilizing the internet as a recruitment and radicalisation ground that allowed the seeds to be sown, and allowed the movements grow into the terrorist powerhouses they are today . 56
Shirky noted that the heralding of the digital age meant a reshaping of how connectivity is formed . According to his work, society trajected itself from how members of the public 57 interacted with culture and each other. Although written in 2010, Shirky’s words had stood steadfast in this regard, with nearly every public figure and politician having a Twitter account, Facebook page or social media account that they post updates to. The idea of microblogging, live streaming or ‘hashtagging’ as a method of communication was nearly non-existent a decade ago (or at least not normalised as everyday terminologies of use). Civic life has now become shaped by the group and equally by the individual and a large part of 58 this societal movement can be accredited to social media introduction into mainstream life, and indeed near impossible to not be part of in some way with internet connection available globally and the standardised owning of smartphones.
But who should be targeted and focused on in these future studies? Sociology reports on the nature and conduct of radicalised individuals show that for the most part, they are educated, middle-class, skillful and proficient in careers and if not part of Western culture, certainly are
56Awan et al. further examines how the lack of initial action by country policy makers led to the growth and festering of the online terrorist networks to fully examine social media and establish and test a PR strategy for online radicalisation: “uncertainty about how discourses of radicalisation operate in the new media ecology is the condition for discourses about radicalisation to proliferate”
Awan, A., Hoskins, A. and O’Loughlin, B., “Radicalisation and Media: Connectivity and Terrorism in the New Media Ecology”. London: Routledge, 2011. pp 7.
57Shirky, Clay. “The Net Advantage.” Prospect Magazine, 5 Jan. 2010,
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-net-advantage.
somewhat exposed to it . This goes against the grain thinking that those who join extreme 59 radicalised terrorist organisations such as ISIS off of social media cohesion are doltish or perhaps have mental disorders when the opposite is true . Perhaps this is a self-preservation 60 61 method on the part of individuals thinking they themselves could never be susceptible to such radicalisation and cult organisations. With quite literally, the majority of normal middle-class people then falling into the category of potential ISIS recruitee, where does one begin to focus their data-mining and targeted disillusionment campaign to avoid any further defections to the Caliphate?
Worryingly, when investigated, most young Americans cited Facebook or Twitter as their main news source in 2016 , with just under sixty percent saying they used Twitter to follow 62 real-time news updates as they unfold. YouTube had seven hours of footage uploaded to the platform every second in 2016 , an inconceivable amount of content to comprehend. 63
Twitter is the largest dissemination platform for the group’s social media exposure . 64
Think-Tank analysts Brooking and Singer estimate around 3.4 million users login to the web regularly . With an average output of nearly 500 million tweets daily from users on the 65 platform . Currently the platform accounts for forty percent of identifiable traffic to radical 66 mujahadeen online content , one of the main reasons it is a primary platform examined in 67 this thesis. The affordance of the platform to ‘go live’ with content means that live streaming can come directly from the conflict zone as the issues are unfolding and it is difficult to shut down instantaneously by administrators. Users can comment and react in real time to the 59Louis, W. “If they’re not crazy, then what? The implications of social psychological approaches to terrorism for conflict management,” 2009. Terrorism and torture: An interdisciplinary perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp 125.
60Further studies into this notion have been conducted in the past with yielded negative results. For more see: Horgan, J. “The search for the terrorist personality,” Terrorists, victims, and society: Psychological perspectives on terrorism and its consequences. Chichester: Wiley. 2003.
61Miller, L. “The terrorist mind: I. A psychological and political analysis,” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. 2006.
62Emerson, T. and Singer, P., “War Goes Viral: How Social Media is Being Weaponized Across the World”, The Atlantic, November
2016.
63Emerson, T. and Singer, P., “War Goes Viral: How Social Media is Being Weaponized Across the World”, The Atlantic, November
2016.
64As shown through the huge amount of Twitter accounts connected with ISIS: In the period of four months in 2014, Berger found nearly 46,000 Twitter accounts supporting the group and Twitter released a statement in 2016 saying it had suspended 235,000 accounts in the last six months for promoting of terrorism propaganda and had deleted 125,000 other accounts in the six months before that. (Morgan, J, and J Berger. 2015 & Woolf, Nicky. “Twitter Suspends 235,000 Accounts in Six Months for Promoting Terrorism.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 Aug. 2016, www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/18/twitter-suspends-accounts-terrorism-links-isis. 65Emerson, T. and Singer, P., “War Goes Viral: How Social Media is Being Weaponized Across the World”, The Atlantic, November
2016.
66Emerson, T. and Singer, P.,
“War Goes Viral: How Social Media is Being Weaponized Across the World”, The Atlantic, November 2016.
action as well as claiming to be part of it or witnessing it without the perceived bias of mainstream or traditional media reporting in the past. That is, that there is no filter of editing or staging available on a livestream than there would be say on a newscast report. However, it is never enough to simply produce the content and then disperse it to the wind in the hopes of it landing on the correct target audience. Availability does not equate to social media reach . 68 Al-Qaeda and ISIS have strengthened their message and PR strategy to such a fine degree that the latter group have a distinctive tone and execution to their videos across the board, marking them out as ISIS content within the first few seconds with logos, music and
long-held sweeping camera shots. An ISIS video is uniform across social media and as such, is recognisable while scrolling on a smartphone . 69
Another study of ISIS Twitter platform studies; Walid et. al chose to only focus on Arabic language tweets, gathering 123 million tweets of users that had mentioned ISIS, in support or opposition between the Autumn 2014 . The research chose to focus on the idea of whether 70 there is a prediction pattern present prior to the accounts first mention of ISIS and whether this could be utilised to prevent future radicalisations before obvious signs begin to emerge and what elements to looks out for in users as to why they grow loyal. One issue with this study that should be rectified going forward was the group’s sole focus on the Arabic language only. With over 30,000 fighters from at least eighty-five countries having been recruited by the group in 2015 alone , as many languages should be taken into account as 71 possible. Another study by the Brookings Institution between September and December 2015 looked at 20,000 ISIS-supporter accounts on Twitter . This study yielded a 75% Arabic and 72 20% English test group to study, showing that there is a large English language focus that 73 may be lost if Arabic is the sole language compiled and researched, encouraging the idea that multiple languages are to be examined to fully comprehend ISIS’ social media utilisation by new media researchers.
68Archetti, C., ‘Terrorism, Communication and New Media: Explaining Radicalisation in the Digital Age’, Perspectives on Terrorism 9(5), 2015, pp: 49–59
69Winters, C. gives the best overall examination of ISIS propaganda video messages in “Documenting the Virtual ‘Caliphate’”. Quilliam, 2015
70Walid et al. “# FailedRevolutions: Using Twitter to study the antecedents of ISIS support.” 2015. Section: Introduction. 71Benmelech, Efraim, and Esteban Klor. “What Explains the Flow of Foreign Fighters to ISIS?” 2016, doi:10.3386/w22190. Pp 1. 72Morgan, J, and J Berger. “The ISIS Twitter Census Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter.” The Brookings
Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World , 2015.
Linguistics has perhaps been the most examined and researched area of ISIS social media strategy. Walid et al. and Bodine-Baron et al. both yielded similar results that supporters of the Caliphate tended to use the full title of ISIS, while detractors were more likely to use an abbreviation or rejected term (IS, ISIL, Daesh). Indeed, Walid et al. found an 93% rate that using the name ISIS indicated support (although we must bear in mind their study only 74 focused on Arabic, it would be interesting to see if there was a cross language correlation). With such a positive and overwhelmingly accurate outcome from Twitter, it seems like the most logical conclusion would be to advise to continue using this particular platform for data mining and research studies in new media and ISIS usage. Studies of keyword usage by the group have also been proven as an effective way to examine how vernacular choice can separate ISIS supporters from detractors. Bodine-Baron et al., compiled twenty three million tweets that contained the words “Islamic State” or “Daesh”. Supporters of the Caliphate most often leaned towards using the group’s self-annointed titles such as Islamic State or ISIS . 75 Derogatory tweets about the organisation most often use Daesh. Furthering on from this, the vernacular tweet study also found associated word clusters that associated Daesh to be mostly likely used in tweets also containing the words “terrorism” ““dogs of Baghdadi” and other Arabic insult terminology . “Soldiers of the Caliphate”, and “lions of the Islamic State” were 76 more often used in associative terms with the phrases ISIS or Islamic state . This result was 77 again reproduced by Magdy et al. that collected three million Arabic language tweets
pertaining to ISIS.
However can Twitter be reflective of a good baseline on which to judge supporters of ISIS? Surely interviewing returnees from the Caliphate would garner more detailed answers and reasoning? The opposition to this from the literature is twofold; one is that the amount of rebounders from ISIS are incredibly limited and difficult to track down. Although people have returned successfully from the Caliphate, many die in combat and those that do return
74Walid et al. “# FailedRevolutions: Using Twitter to study the antecedents of ISIS support.” 2015. Section: Data collection. 75Bodine-Baron et al. Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter. RAND Corporation Santa Monica United States. 2016. Pg xi.
76ibid. 77Ibid.
often struggle to discuss their experiences , so the sample remains too limited to fully gauge 78 a hypothesis. The second issue with using real person interviews instead of Twitter data is in the platform allowance of complete anonymity. Due to the polarised and criminalised nature of showing ISIS support, many interviewees would be uncomfortable or unforthcoming regarding their honest opinions on the group. Twitter circumvents this narrative, allowing people to display their ‘true’ feelings on the matter behind an anonymous avatar . Even 79 while accounting for issues with bots and fake accounts, Twitter provides the most honest collection of information regarding support for ISIS on social media and has a plethora of tools at disposal at which to harvest this data from. The main obstacle will be deletion of accounts from the platform, luckily researchers have saved a huge amount of data all ready and nearly all research reports listed throughout the literature review allowed open access on request of the studied tweets.
Twitter also allows the creation of social network analysis creation between accounts that can be used as part of an overarching puzzle piece to see connections and interactions between users. Following on from this, issue networks can be utilised to connect a link formation that avoids the issue of geography (that is, that issue networks can be created to focus on a topic, such as ISIS support and encompass both western and arabic accounts to create a more homogenous picture on which to draw sampling from ). 80
Frampton laments that no amount of ‘whack-a-mole’ by these government policy bodies to shut down accounts have even scratched the surface of ISIS content production and
circulation of propaganda. There is not yet a way to fully remove and wipe the existence of a piece of content from the web as of yet. There is a lawless element in place on these
platforms, one that is underwhelmingly underappreciated. Frampton suggests an installation of an ethical code for researchers in which direct links or copied sources of ISIS propaganda 81 to not allow direct access to the source content. However, this toes the difficult line of
78Both Patrikarakos and Callimachi struggled with finding subjects to interview for their pieces on ISIS defectors, with the latter only finding one and both subjects insisting on complete anonymity.
( Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017. And Callimachi, Rukmini. “ISIS and the Lonely Young American.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/world/americas/isis-online-recruiting-american.html.)
79Walid et al. “# FailedRevolutions: Using Twitter to study the antecedents of ISIS support.” 2015. Section: Discussion. 80Rogers, Richard. Digital Methods. The MIT Press, 2015. Kindle Ed: The Links and Politics of Web Space.
81
whether restricting viewership may restrict the full exploration of the topic and lead readers to seek out un-filtered or censored content to understand the context of the research. Pushing these social media platforms to do more in curbing the access and proflication of ISIS propaganda comes with issues itself; as the governing policy bodies that are instructing and criticising the technology companies to do more in blocking ISIS material have given little in the way of practical guidance and methods into actually blocking the content . 82
There is no reasonable plan presented that will actually instill some form of rational change in the spread of ISIS content and accounts that technology companies can follow. If there was a watertight method to ensure complete removal of ISIS identity on the platforms, it would have been already installed. Morozov compounds this notion, that there must not be a
‘solutionist’ finality to any policy work drafted . Instead of attempting to solve the matter of 83 radicalisation online through regulation of platforms alone, there must first be ample work done on investigating why and how the group managed to persuade so many to join their flanks. Only through full examination of the new media platforms themselves can we begin to shape an active solution that will stick when applied to online networks. How the issue is examined matters just as much as how they are resolved, especially in cases such as this, where psychology of the human condition, new media and communication all play an active role.
82Ibid.
Platform Analysis
As stated in the literature review section , there remains woefully little actual case by case 84 review studies of individual platforms most utilised by ISIS and scrutiny of the affordances these new media platforms uniquely give to the organisation to share propaganda and appropriate as a recruitment ground. In this section, a oversee of Twitter, video-sharing and content distribution platforms most popular with the group will be further examined. Due to the constant change and movement from video and content platforms, no one website apart from Twitter can be examined, however as shown many of them are mirror-copies of one another (that is, JustPasteIt, PasteMaker and Sharetext are all code copies but are under different domain names.). The unique utilisation of these different new media platforms are important to examine to fully understand what exactly are the significant steps that ISIS took to control and utilise different tools and algorithms to their fullest. Questions why there is such an importance of hashtags to reach a mass audience? How the organisation has avoided takedown for explicit content through open-source sharing platforms like JustPasteIt? As well how the various encrypted based messaging tools are benefiting the group to fly under the radar while distributing a huge amount of sensitive information to its global members.
The benefits of allowing instantaneous globalisation of information to be distributed is also counterbalanced by this material not being able to go through the same filters it previous had. The inability to sift through the vast expansiveness of web content today means that there is relatively little regulation in place, especially for new media content platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and 4Chan that have only emerged in the last decade. Indeed, there seems a certain level of irony present in utilization of the web and new media as a means of
showcasing the ISIS utopia of returning to an infinitely more basic and antiquated time of rural agriculture , medieval style crime and punishment retribution and pre-feminist gender 85 86 84Page XX
85 ‘Agriculture in the western sector of Raqqa Province’, Raqqa Province Media Office, 27 July 2015 & ‘Agriculture in the village of Suwi'ayya in the countryside of Albu Kamal’, Euphrates Province Media Office, 29 July 2015
86 ‘Healing of the believers’ chests’, al-Furqan Foundation, 3 February 2015;
http://jihadology.net/2015/02/03/al-furqan-media-presents-a-new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-healing-of-the-believers-chest/ & ‘But if you return, we shall return’, Nineveh Province Media Office, 23 June 2015,
hierarchies . Utilizing the most modern of networks to target the West to return to the 87 Quranic lifestyle seems like an odd coupling. Indeed, appealing to Western mindsets also means embracing elements of the lifestyle, including memes on social media. In 2014, ISIS soldiers posted a series of ‘Nutella’ photos, tagging themselves in areas of the State . The 88 well-execution and timing of this hash-tagging trend implies it was a social media rollout organised within forums to appear appealing and familiar to potential Western recruitees. The age of US recruits is also reflective of this. With the average radicalised jihadi soldier aged twenty-four , there is a definitive reflection that ISIS’ work at targeting the millennial 89 generation on social media is gaining traction.
Twitter is one of the most important social platforms to have emerged in the last decade as a political and cultural discussion place for significant discourse and one that has shaped ISIS 90 more than any other terrorist organisation . Twitter is the main stronghold of social media 91 that ISIS have laid claim to . There, so called ardent supporters of the Caliphate or ‘Knights 92 of the Uploading ’ constantly produce and share Islamic propaganda. Although attempts 93 have been made to delete and handle these accounts more efficiently, with the rise of bots and the central symposium of shared hashtags such as #joinisis or #CalamityWillBefallUs
allowing followers to easily gather, accounts now have less importance than before. Reporting and deletion of users has done little to hinder the organisation. Twitter accounts can be re-made and constructed just like the planks of the ship of Theseus; although not the same account names, they project the same narrative to the whole and amount to the same contribution to hashtags and content postage, despite being replacement parts of the the entire movement. Deletion and restriction from online tech companies has little effect on the
message projection as of now.
87Islamic State “ Evidence For the Obligation to Cover the Women’s Face.”, 30 July 2015,
https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/the-islamic-state-22evidence-for-the-obligation-to-cover-the-womens-face22.pdf
88Natalie Andrews and Felicia Schwartz, “Islamic State Pushes Social-Media Battle With West,” The Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2014,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/isis-pushes-social-media-battle-with-west-1408725614
89Nance, Malcolm & United States House Committee on Homeland Security, Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and
Foreign Fighter Travel. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp 16
90Walid et al. # FailedRevolutions: Using Twitter to study the antecedents of ISIS support. 2015. 91Ibid.
92Patrikarakos, David. War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Basic Books, 2017.
Kindle Ed. The Counterterrorist
The group has deftly handled the algorithms, tone and affordances of the tool to fully benefit it as a method to spread propaganda and garner a huge amount of interest from a mass audience. In April 2014, at the beginning of the group’s rise of social media dominance, its Arabic Twitter app add-on was launched in the Google Play store to freely download . ‘The 94 Dawn of Glad Tiding’ is based on the same code as Thunderclap, the add-on frequented by many political campaigns in the US. The app posts tweets written by an ISIS copywriter to the users personal timeline. The code is set to disperse sharing over a period of time to avoid bulk tweets that would be detected by Twitter’s algorithms as spam . The application also 95 gathers a large amount of personal information on sign up. Why is this particular add-on significant? The clever re-utilisation of Thunderclap to better serve the publication of ISIS news updates shows that the organisation was aware of Western technology from an early stage and are strategic enough to refit ideas for their own benefit. This also later comes into play with content sharing, as the group finds itself removed from sites, it simply creates its own. This gives off a problematic lawless impression. Just as one platform is closed or restricted to the group, another can be easily built and created. New media has facilitated a rise in a whack-a-mole mentality in that it has become near impossible to properly regulate the web system to allow governments and regulating policy bodies to control access and usage of certain sites and tools and proliferation of new account creation.
When the city of Mosul fell to ISIS in the Summer of 2014, Fawell estimates that members produced average 44,000 tweets a day, mostly sharing images of troops marching on the city. This subsequently led to the algorithm adjusting for the image to appear at the top of many accounts and the first image when users searched the word ‘Baghdad’ . This savvy approach 96 to overloading the platform’s system with keywords meant that ISIS managed to ensure far more people that would not be interested or aware of the group’s activity subsequently saw their victory march displayed on Twitter. Keywords have one of the most significant levels of importance on Twitter. Hashtagging is now a normalised term and has allowed the group to further their approach of propaganda campaigns to the largest possible audience by utilising a 94“Isis Official App Available to Download on Google Play.”
ITV News, ITV Hub, www.itv.com/news/2014-06-17/isiss-official-app-available-to-download-on-google-play/.
95Farwell, J. How ISIS uses social media. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2014. 96Farwell, J. How ISIS uses social media. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2014.
key affordance offered on the platform. How do they utilise hashtags in particular? Berger discusses the key strategic campaign of the group on Twitter again lies in overloading the algorithm through multiple accounts tweeting the same hashtag in order to have it trend and appear on millions of people’s news feed as a popular topic of discussion . The movement 97 from a somewhat insular audience of already enthused ISIS fans have the ability to bring the content through the mainstream through group hashtag hijacking. The Arabic language account @activeHashtags was particularly targeted by the group. The account tweets daily top trending hashtags and has an active following (averaging on seventy two retweets per tweet ) that meant their tweets reporting on ISIS’ bulk tweeting resulted in a huge surge of 98 interest from people that would have otherwise not have been exposed to the group’s activities. In another example of hashtag hijacking by the group, popular already trending topics such as the World Cup #Brazil2014 were taken over by ISIS supporters than
coordinated their tweets to ensure that users would be overloaded with tweets from the group with links to content that might be clicked on leading to ISIS video and websites . 99
In a four month study conducted in 2014 (the highest reaches of ISIS’ social media
movement) , almost 50,000 - 70,000 Twitter accounts were in use by public ISIS supporters . These accounts of self-promoting Caliphate citizens each had a large support of followers, 100
a medium of a thousand year, far greater than the average account . As well as this, 101 supporters of the Caliphate tended to tweet in far greater volume than opposers . Another 102 study conducted by Alfifi et al. found that over three quarters of the interactions ISIS Twitter accounts received in 2015 were from later suspended accounts . 103
This ‘ISIS-lite’ propaganda movement is aimed away from soldiers and fighting and highlights the education and healthcare under the State. The ‘Brand Caliphate’ of ISIS 104 began earnestly as soon as their claimed the city of Mosul. Emblazoning themselves as a 97Berger, J.M. “How ISIS Games Twitter.”
The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 16 June 2014, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/.
98Berger, J.M. “How ISIS Games Twitter.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 16 June 2014,
www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/.
99Farwell, J. How ISIS uses social media. International Institute for Strategic Studies. 2014. 100Although all were not active concurrently
101Morgan, J, and J Berger. “The ISIS Twitter Census Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter.” The
Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World , 20 Mar. 2015. Pp 2
102“
However, ISIS supporters routinely outtweet opponents, as they produce 50 percent more tweets per day.” Bodine-Baron et al. Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter. RAND Corporation Santa Monica United States. 2016. Pg xi. 103Alfifi. M et al. Measuring the Impact of ISIS Social Media Strategy. Texas A&M University. 2018.
