ISIS has combined brutality with social media acumen to become one of the most feared and reviled organizations on earth in recent months, publicly releasing videos of be headings of Americans and British hostages in addition to broadcasting other unspeakable acts of violence.
Their latest video is not horrific or extreme. Rather, they have released a video game trailer, cut and edited in a way to try and recruit new, young members into the organization. Throughout the three minutes and 39 seconds of the video, various clips taken from GTA 5 are shown, such as a man hiding in the bushes shooting with a sniper, fighters shouting Allahu Akbar as they attack a military convoy, and a man pulling out of a police officer from his car and shooting hime to death. In between these clips, the video shows an image of ISIS logo incorporated with the GTA styling. At the end, of the video, the words "Flames of War" appear, followed by a tagline that says: "Fighting has just begun."
It is not clear if ISIS has developed a modified version of GTA 5 as a tool to train combatants or if it is simply using the game to entice young gamers to upgrade their brands of violence from video games to real life. El Fagr, a Cairo-based independent publication says ISIS intended the video to "raise the morale of Mujahideen, and then training of children and young teenagers to fight the West, and throw terror into the hearts of opponents of the state."
COMBATING ISIS ONLINE RECRUITMENT
TERROR HAS GONE SOCIAL
We thought Zerofox provided a very illuminating and easy to understand infographic on ISIS Social Media strategy. Click on the link below or peruse through the posters!
ECHO CHAMBER & SOCIAL MEDIA This NY Times article provides a up-to-date information on the organization's social media strategy. It highlights key findings from the recent ISIS social media study from George Washington University.
Diversity - Out of the 71 individuals arrested for egging on ISIS related activities, 40% were recent Muslim converts. There was no ethnic trend amonst group. Most importantly, they were all young - with an average age of 26.
Insular Community - "They share memes and inside jokes, terms and phrases you'd only know if you were a follwer." *The insular culture reinforces the idea that the United States is at war with islam and portrays terrorist groups as nobly resisting America's global military ambitions.
There are about 550 western women who has joined ISIS. Out of the 550 western women, 100 of them are British. Why are the significant number of female recruits come from the UK? The case of the three London girls in may shed some light on the crucial question of why.
In February 2015, 3 fifteen year olds - Khadiza Sultana, Amira Abase, and Shamima Begum- departed their lives in London and travelled to Syria to join ISIS. The three girls joined ISIS to marry the western fighters of the organization. Through an ISIS Social Media marriage arranger, the girls were given an array of options of western men to choose from. The girls selected their favorites, planned the departure for months (by packing their luggage in a different location,) and disappeared from their lives in London.
Average Teenagers
The three girls were normal teenagers. They all attended the Bethnal Green Academy in East London, and all of them were brought up in Islam. The three girls were no different than the other teenage girls in the neighborhood. They wished to be good Muslims and often prayed at the East London Mosque. But they were also British teenagers at the same time. They enjoyed having sleepovers and watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
Their Community
The NY Times investigated the East London community from which the girls were, through observation and a series of interviews. In the East London Muslim community, a strict Muslim tradition was promulgated. Women were severely subordinated by men. This was evident even from their Mosque architecture; the women’s prayer room was purposely built below and behind the men’s. In this community, women are taught to believe that music is sinful and are discouraged from exercising in public. The easily impressible girls - through ardent sermons by ultra conservative Muslim speakers- are soon inspired to believe that following those rules make themselves good followers of Islam. Even the girls who used to enjoy music and fashion eventually become inculcated and turn to prayers and black veils.
The Double Standard
In this ultra conservative Muslim Community in London, not everyone is forced to follow all the teachings of the speakers. Through a quick glance at the community, one can soon realize that a double standard for males exist. Though alcohol is banned under Islam, boys drink freely, listen to any type of music, and dress up however they want. Girls - on the other hand- are unforgivable if they breach any of the rules. This unfair double standard that only applies to boys causes girls of the community to question their identity and sense of belonging. They begin to ask themselves, “I’m a Muslim woman in a British town. Why is it that boys enjoy the British standard of living while the girls stick to a strict standard that resemble Saudi Arabia? Do I really belong in this community?” As they begin to question the culture of the community they live in, they become more vulnerable. They begin to believe that they will be the “right fit” somewhere else.
ISIS Selling Point
ISIS was knowledgeable of the uncertainties and identity issues the girls were facing in the community. Through social media contact ISIS caused the girls to think:
I am valued somewhere else.
I will feel a sense of belonging there.
They will treat me as the good muslim women I’ve been.
There will be no double standard for boys.
They will allow me to enjoy the things that I used to like with a western groom.
This picture was tweeted by Amira Abase after they had fled to Syria. The girls were enjoying their western takeaways for dinner to show that they were living a good life. Such a photo is certainly misleading. This photo could have been part of the ISIS social media strategy to lure in more western girls after.
Though the girls are now married to ISIS in Syria, their social media accounts are still active. However, overtime their accounts have been flooded by ISIS propaganda. Their families say, “they are not them anymore.”
A South Korean teenager, called "Kim," disappeared in a southern Turkish border city, leading authorities to suspect that he may have slipped away to Syria to join ISIS. Police found he had a keen interest in the Islamic militants. Using a Twitter profile picture of an ISIS flag, he frequently tweeted, "I want join" and asked to meet "brothers." He followed pro-ISIS accounts and often retweeted the group's propaganda. It akso turned out that he had used Surespot - a secure mobile messaging application that uses exceptional end-to-end encryption for every text, image and voice message - to communicate with a man linked to the radical Islamist group.
On his social media posts, he claimed he was from Chechnya, and lamented that "male are being discriminated against." "I hate feminist," he said, according to a post on his Twitter account on October 5. "So I like the isis." He retweeted Arabic posts and tweeted in English, but never in Korean.
South Korea may not be a probable place for aspiring ISIS members -- with less than 0.3% of the population identifying as Muslim. The case thus shows how ISIS has expanded its reach globally. Kim’s case also proves serious threat towards younger generation who are more susceptible to the ISIS’s appeal due to their extensive use of Internet.
STORY OF A LONELY AMERICAN GIRL
Alex is a 23-years-old Sunday school teacher and babysitterwho has lived with her grandparents for almost all her life. This lonely American girl—with a persistent lack of maturity and poor judgment due to fetal alcohol syndrome—spent hours each day on Twitter, Skype and email. As a Christian, she kept teaching at her church but eventually developed her online circle of new Muslim friends. She was connected to several dozen accounts, “some operated by people who directly identified themselves as members of the Islamic State or whom terrorism analysts believe to be directly linked to the group”.
Over the course of a few months, this virtual community talked to her about the Islamic State and what it meant to be a Muslim, indulged her curiosity, and calmed her apprehensions. Alex received money, greeting cards, gifts of chocolate, books, a prayer rug, and other objects to help with her conversion throughout the period of online communication, and in December, converted to Islam by taking a vow on twitter.
By mid-February, her online friends began making more demands, saying that Alex following a handful of her Christian friends were unacceptable. Highlighting that it was “a sin for a Muslim to stay among nonbelievers, [the] talk [between Alex and her virtual friends] increasingly began revolving around her traveling to “a Muslim land.” [Then, Alex began to] imagine her role with the Islamic State as a mother— a goal that felt painfully elusive in rural Washington.”
In March, Alex’s family, suspicious of overseas packages and instances of her late-night usage of tablet computer, decided to confiscate her devices for online communication. She later agreed to hand over the passwords to her Twitter and email accounts. However, after this interview around June with Rukmini Callimachi from The New York Times, Alex resumed online communication.
This case study is a model example of personal engagements the Islamic State undergoes.
“The group is [currently] making a relentless effort to recruit Westerners into its ranks, eager to exploit them for their outsize propaganda value.”Nasser Weddady, a Middle East expert “who is preparing a research paper on combating extremist propaganda”, said: “all of us have a natural firewall in our brain that keeps us from bad ideas, [but the online jihadists] look for weaknesses in the wall, and then they attack.” Nearly 4,000 Westerners are assumed to have traveled to join the group in Syria and Iraq by now, and increasing number of peoples’ natural firewalls are breaking down through ISIS’s personal approaches and their adept use of social media.
ISIS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA WAS USED TO RECRUIT
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that“Southeast Asia is a key recruitment center for ISIS,” and that the group poses a “clear and present danger” to the region. The Islamic State exposed its intention to establish a province of its caliphate in Southeast Asia, and groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf are pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, adding the threat to the security of the area.
Lee disclosed that as a method of recruitment and propaganda, ISIS has uploaded a video showing “Malay-speaking children training with weapons inside territory controlled by the terror group, and that two Malaysians were identified in a separate video carrying out the beheading of a Syrian man.”
Singapore’s Defense minister Ng Eng Hen said that ISIS and ideology enticed more followers in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in the past three years than al-Qaeda did in the 10 years after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Singapore reported a few foreign fighters travelling to Iraq and Syria, Malaysia up to 150 including some from the Malaysian armed forces, and Indonesia more than 500. “ISIS has so many Indonesian and Malaysian fighters that they form a unit by themselves -- the Katibah Nusantara -- Malay Archipelago Combat Unit,” said Lee.
The Southeast Asian recruits were swayed by “tech-savvy” messages posted on social media and echoed by some local Muslim leaders. To prevent further progress of the Islamic State in the region, nations are making their efforts to bring a change. As of August 2014, Indonesia banned support for ISIS and “continues to develop a related legal process to enforce it, with an additional ban on travel and less effective measures to shut down pro-ISIS media.” Malaysia, with the help of the US, will set up a regional center to counter ISIS online and social media propaganda by the end of the 2015.
The current debate on ISIS is largely restricted to the West and Middle East. However, the jihadists' scope for attracting its recruits seem to have no geographic boundaries. The terror group will not stop widening its targets of recruitment and attacks around the world unless the anti-Islamic State coalition strives to cooperate globally without forgetting these countries in Southeast Asia.
In November 2014, three Colorado teenagers flew to Germany to join the Islamic State group. These girls were brought back to the U.S. after being stopped in Frankfurt before they made their way to Syria, but they have not been charged and their identities have not been revealed because they are juveniles.
This case study exemplifies a public approach ISIS takes and its recruitment procedures through social media. All three of the girls, a 16-year-old girl of Sudanese descent, and two 15- and 17-year-old sisters of Somali descent, spent extensive time on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and other social media. These teens followed numerous online jihadists, including the Twitter accounts like "Jihadi News" and the "Women of Islam," where YouTube jihadi lectures would be constantly tweeted.
Their process “from use of social media, radicalization, recruitment online, even though the actual travel route to join the Islamic State” is just like the pattern a few hundred more Westerners follow. Allegedly, 100 Americans have joined the Islamic State, and these teens are just a few among those countless people enticed to join the terror organization.
ISIS is an adept social media machine. Their propaganda strategies on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and platforms rival those of professional PRs and social media marketing experts. Through its social media propaganda, ISIS has unfortunately been very successful in garnering recruits and spreading their extremist ideology all across the globe.
WHY TWITTER?
Although this blog deals with the issue of ISIS’s social media strategy as a whole, its focus will be on one specific social media platform - Twitter. The writers of this blog believed it was apt to place the emphasis on one major social media platform for a more in-depth analysis.
But why Twitter over other social media platforms? It was found in a terrorism study published by George Washington University that ISIS sympathisers and ISIS supporters themselves prefer the use of Twitter over other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp. There are several premises to explain why Twitter is prefered.
First, Twitter is the most ideal platform to introduce a new ideology in a very unassuming way. The act of “following” is less meaningful than Instagram and of course “friending” on Facebook. One feature of Twitter -hashtags- make ISIS an adept social media machine. Through trending hashtags, ISIS supporters and ISIS members insert themselves in currently popular discussions to gain more exposure. Now, you might think, “But Twitter is not the only social media platform that has hashtags?” Yes, it’s true that Instagram, Facebook and other platforms have the function of hashtags, but they simply do not work as effectively as Twitter. Because Twitter is the primary social media platform ISIS exploits, the blog too will be focusing on Twitter.
As an organization which intends to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate, their long term target is the whole world. However, at this stage, ISIS aims to convert and recruit the vulnerable ones first. So who is vulnerable?
The Youth.Even amongst teenagers, those who are lonely and lack a solid vision in life tend to fall for the social media tactics of ISIS. The young, easily impressible teens can be inculcated to believe that ISIS is a source of hope and purpose in their lives. Those who are lonely finally feel belonged -- by being part of the tight-knit ISIS community. The ingroup bias begins to develop as these targets set foot in the ISIS virtual community. Being exposed to the community’s “own peculiar language, stirring imagery and warm camaraderie,” the targets feel that they are part of something better, something meaningful. They feel the “sense of adventure and devotion to a cause” -- factors vastly lacking in their lonely lives.
Platforms. ISIS uses all social media platforms available - though its focus is on Twitter. After gaining extensive exposure through platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Diaspora. The social media soldiers turn to Whatsapp, Linkedin, Facebook, and Skype for a more personal interaction with potential recruits.
Methods. ISIS’s social media propaganda is not just about quantity. It has developed strategic methods to specifically target different groups and increase exposure-to-recruit rate.
Self-Insertion into Trending Hashtags. ISIS fully exploits the exhaustive nature of hashtags to further promote their organization. For every worldwide news or events, ISIS social media army would use the trending hashtags to insert themselves in the trend. For example, during the 2014 Napa Quake and the Worldcup, ISIS began to hijack the hashtags - #napaquake and #worldcup - and posted gruesome photos and threatening messages.
THE DAWN: ISIS APP
The Dawn of Glad Tidings is an official ISIS app that provides the latest jihadist news. But it certainly does way more than inform the app users. The Dawn is the primary tool to magnify the perceived influence of ISIS. Once the download is completed, the user is required to fill in a fair amount of personal information. The app- connected to the app user’s Twitter account- automatically repost ISIS related tweets to your account. The content is generated by an ISIS social media administrator. According to the Atlantic,
“The tweets include links, hashtags, and images, and the same content is also tweeted by the accounts of everyone else who has signed up for the app, spaced out to avoid triggering Twitter’s spam-detection algorithms. Your Twitter account functions normally the rest of the time, allowing you to go about your business.”
the page you see once you download the app, the Dawn
MULTILINGUAL, WESTERN APPROACH
According to the ISIS Twitter Census, among the 46,000 Twitter accounts (in 2014) 73% of the tweets were in Arabic, 18% in English, and 9% in various languages. Just because ISIS is based in Syria and Iraq, the ISIS social media strategy is not limited to Arabic. By tweeting in the reader's’ mother-tongue language or in comprehensible words, ISIS narrows the perceived cultural gap by breaking the language barrier. Not only does ISIS use multiple languages, they use strategic diction and cyber jargon to appeal to the younger and western-culture audience.
Despite ISIS’s denunciation of western culture, ISIS hypocritically exploits west-originated cyber language to lure western teenagers. As shown by the ISIS tweet below, the tweet utilizes “lol” and the number “4” instead of for to falsely manifest similarities between ISIS and western teens.
The phases of radicalization are classified as the following four stages: 1) agitation, 2) self-identification, 3) indoctrination and 4) violent extremism. During agitation process, one experiences fear and hopelessness from personal vulnerabilities such as poverty, trauma, and injustice. In self-identification, one feels peer pressure and the urge to belong to the group. In indoctrination, one builds personal capacity and in violent extremism, personal fulfillment through action and sacrifice.One loses his or her connections to society or family after each level, becoming increasingly ready to join the Islamic State step by step.
In terms of social media, videos that feature the group’s real-life situations from the wonder of their daily discoveries to violent beheadings get uploaded on YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and other media sites. These present not only their mission and purpose, but also the adventure and fun, attracting a growing number of online users.
ISIS has been masterfully utilizing social media to radicalize marginalized and disenfranchised youth internationally, owning at least 46,000 Twitter accounts and posting more than 200,000 pieces of content on social media daily. US Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said "social media is a critical front in this because the [ISIL/ISIS] uses social media to project [their] narrative."
