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With the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the issue of domestic radicalisation has taken on renewed significance for Western democracies. In particular, attention has been drawn to the potency of ISIS engagement on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Several governments have emphasised the importance of online programs aimed at undermining ISIS recruitment, including the use of state-run accounts on a variety of social media platforms to respond directly to ISIS messaging. This article assesses the viability of online counter-radicalisation by examining the effectiveness of similar programs at the US State Department over the last decade. The article argues that governments attempting to counter online radicalisation of their domestic populations must take seriously the significant shortcomings of these State Department programs. The most relevant issue in this regard is the recurring problem of credibility, when the authenticity of government information is undercut by the realities of foreign policy practice, and existing perceptions of hypocrisy and duplicity are reinforced in target audiences.

With the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the issue of domestic radicalisation has taken on renewed significance for Western democracies. In particular, attention has been drawn to the potency of ISIS engagement on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Several governments have emphasised the importance of online programs aimed at undermining ISIS recruitment, including the use of state-run accounts on a variety of social media platforms to respond directly to ISIS messaging. This article assesses the viability of online counter radicalisation by examining the effectiveness of similar programs at the US State Department over the last decade. The article argues that
governments attempting to counter online radicalisation of their domestic populations must take seriously the significant shortcomings of these State Department programs. The most relevant issue in this regard is the recurring problem of credibility, when the authenticity of government information is undercut by the realities of foreign policy practice, and existing perceptions of hypocrisy and duplicity are reinforced in target audiences.

While there is growing research on radicalisation and its countermeasures, in the context of Bangladesh, there is a paucity of academic studies on the role of social media in the radicalisation of university students. This research addresses the gap by using survey data to examine the online behaviour and social media use of the university-going youth in Bangladesh. The study finds that there is very little distinction between accurate Islamic theological understandings and radical interpretations of Islam among university-going youth, and there is a proliferation of social media content that tell tales of subjugation of Muslims since the inception of Islam. Many (geopolitical) conflicts are seen by the youth as a continuation of the narrative of Western imperialism. The research identifies the core of the dissonance and argues that the idea of Muslim subjugation stems from sociocultural influences and is exacerbated by social media use.

This chapter summarises the findings of a case study on social media activity during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway. Based on these findings and on theories and previous research on the role of social media in situation awareness (SA) configuration during crisis situations, the chapter offers seven recommendations for key communicators in official crisis management and response institutions, journalistic institutions, NGOs and others: (1) acknowledge social media as important and master monitoring and management of features across social media; (2) synchronise communication and establish a standard operating procedure (SOP); (3) establish and make known a joint social media emergency account; (4) participate, interact and take the lead; (5) be aware of non-hashtagged content; (6) implement verification tools and practices and (7) engage with and learn from celebrities. Book edited by Harald Hornmoen and Klas Backholm

The paper maintains the complementary nature of technological practice and discursive content in the process of meaning-making in digital jihadist discourse. The study shows that digital practices of strategic sharing, distribution and campaigns to re-upload textual materials are made possible by exploiting SMC communicative affordances. As for the analysis of discursive content, the paper focuses on YouTube and highlights strategic patterns and covert references in an IS-produced flagship video. It illustrates how IS discourse constructs its envisaged in-group/outgroup by (re-)symbolising current events within historical, political and ideological conflict scenarios, i.e. the incessant resistance and legitimacy of forces of virtue vs evil. By foregrounding symbolic references to military outgroup actors, IS legitimises its own violence and projects a powerful self-identity against a (perceived) global hegemony. The paper shows how the combination of a technologically savvy operation and a resistant, anti-hegemonic narrative, embedded in a strategically framed symbolism of Islam, may resonate with global (quasi)-diasporic digital consumers.

• Social media companies should recognise the political importance of counterterrorist financing (CTF) by explicitly reflecting the priorities of the UN Security Council and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in their policies, strategies and transparency reports.
• Furthermore, social media companies identified as being at high risk of exploitation should update their terms of service and community standards to explicitly reference and outlaw terrorist financing (consistent with universally applicable international law and standards such as those of the FATF) and actions that contravene related UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions.
• Social media companies should clearly demonstrate that they understand and apply appropriate sanctions designations; at the same time, policymakers should ensure that sanctions designations include, where possible, information such as email addresses, IP addresses and social media handles that can support sanctions implementation by social media companies. The more granular the information provided by governments on designated entities, the more efficiently the private sector can comply with sanctions designations.
• Social media companies should more tightly control functionality to ensure that raising terrorist funding through social media videos, such as big-brand advertising and Super Chat payments, is disabled.
• Researchers and policymakers should avoid generalisations and make a clear distinction between forms of social media and the various terrorist-financing vulnerabilities that they pose, recognising the different types of platforms available, and the varied ways in which terrorist financiers could abuse them.
• Policymakers should encourage both inter-agency and cross-border collaboration on the threat of using social media for terrorist financing, ensuring that agencies involved are equipped with necessary social media investigative capabilities.
• International law enforcement agencies such as Interpol and Europol should facilitate the development of new investigation and prosecution standard operating procedures for engaging with operators of servers and cloud services based in overseas jurisdictions to ensure that necessary evidence can be gathered in a timely fashion. This would also encourage an internationally harmonised approach to using social media as financial intelligence.
• Policymakers should encourage the building of new, and leveraging of existing, public–private partnerships to ensure social media company CTF efforts are informed and effective.