Social Media

Using a dataset of over 1.9 million messages posted on Twitter by about 25,000 ISIS members, we explore how ISIS makes use of social media to spread its propaganda and to recruit militants from the Arab world and across the globe. By distinguishing between violence-driven, theological, and sectarian content, we trace the connection between online ...

Weeks after its capture of Mosul in 2014, the Islamic State set about transforming its strategic trajectory. Through an avalanche of media products, it worked to aggressively insert itself into the global public discourse and, in turn, popularise its brand, polarise adversary populations and drive rivals into the ideological side-lines. This research paper presents new, empirical insight ...

In the wake of devastating attacks by violent extremists around the world, policy makers have invested considerable effort into understanding terrorists’ use of the Internet as they radicalize and mobilize to violence. To that end, the article “Terrorist Use of the Internet by the Numbers: Quantifying Behaviors, Patterns, and Processes” by Paul Gill, Emily Corner, ...

Employing social network analysis, this article investigates  the  transnational communication network and discourse of political-Salafists on social media. It examines whether political-Salafists across the MENA region have a common sociopolitical and geopolitical agenda, and whether – given the recent shift of some political-Salafists towards violence – their discourse and communication network can still be distinguished ...

It is commonly recognized that social media presents vast new opportunities for terrorist groups seeking to radicalize audiences. However, few scholars have studied the actual mechanisms by which radicalizing messages are delivered to those audiences. Within this paper, the author explores one key aspect of the phenomenon of ‘jihadi cool’ – that is, the rendering ...

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has made great use of the Internet and online social media sites to spread its message and encourage others, particularly young people, to support the organization, to travel to the Middle East to engage in combat—fighting side-by-side with other jihadists, or to join the group by playing ...

The Somali jihadi-insurgent movement Al-Shabab has established itself, since emerging in 2007 after the overthrow of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) umbrella in the wake of the December 2006 Ethiopian invasion and occupation of parts of Somalia, as one of the relatively few jihadi organizations to succeed in the capture, control, and governance of territory ...

Which news sources do supporters of populist islamophobic groups and their opponents rely on, and how are these sources related to each other? We explore these questions by studying the websites referenced in discussions surrounding Pegida, a right-wing populist movement based in Germany that is opposed to what its supporters regard as islamization, cultural marginalization ...

On the one hand, the companies in question feel a business incentive to create a digital environment where their users feel safe, and are increasingly compelled by governments to cooperate in blocking, filtering, countering or removing content or accounts on the grounds of public safety or national security concerns. In addition, users expect the companies ...

The Jihadist phenomenon has a privileged space in Web 2.0 where contents can be created, networks can be global and all exchanges of information have significance. The emergent Jihadist organizations have been profiting from these digital communication features to enlarge, diversify and connect with their audience. On the one side, the virtual framing of Jihad ...