The Syrian conflict led to a resurrection of ISIS in terms of recruitment, financing, propaganda, and enlisting itself as an actor in the Middle East. ISIS’s ability to use both social media and other traditional methods of recruitment requires countries like Turkey to adopt multi-faceted approaches in order to be more effective. Cyberspace, and particularly social media, is very critical to understanding how ISIS sustains its recruitment and propaganda activities.
This report entitled ‘ISIS in Cyberspace: Findings from Social Media Research’ focuses on social media and terrorism by analyzing how pro-ISIS Twitter users see and legitimize ISIS and its ideology in cyberspace. Following an extensive review of literature on ISIS’s historical background along with its capabilities in various fields, the research analyzes tweeting patterns of sampled pro-ISIS Twitter accounts and examines the contents of messages posted by those accounts.