Terrorism And The Social Media

Domestic terrorist groups are violent extremists that want to attack the U.S. from the inside. Their intent is to frighten, pressure, and/or influence national principles. Today’s terrorist organizations are using cyberspace to spread their message. Training and online recruitment are also being made available by the Internet and social media websites. Some of the acts are lone-wolf attacks and others are collective attacks. Some examples of domestic terrorist groups that use cyberspace are Army of God, Sovereign Citizens, and Phineas Priesthood. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report on terrorism, stating that more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists (Henderson, 2015). Terrorist

Due to the civil war in Syria refuges have been trying to find safety in other countries (Berenson 2015). A picture of a man holding his dead son who had drowned while trying to sail to Kos was made published in ISIS’s magazine. By ISIS publishing the photo it went viral on social media and was widely published in traditional media (Berenson 2015). ISIS is trying to show that by refugees trying to abandon the Islamic homeland that they are sacrificing their children. (Berenson 2015). They are trying to prove that immigration is bad because they view the countries that they are trying to go to are worse because they are full of war, atheism and indecency (Berenson 2015). This photo can be used as a tool for ISIS to gain support and to keep

Domestic Terrorism; Homegrown Violent Extremists: When it comes to domestic terrorism, social media seems to also play a role in it. Many attacks the United States gave faced are usually bought by homegrown extremists. Homegrown extremists are “American or American residents who adopt the jihadist’s philosophy” (White, 2014 p.323). The internet is a driver that acts as an enabler, where terrorist’s organizations can share plans, information, targets, weapons, and recruit individuals. Another, propaganda found in the web is the Inspire online English language magazine, published by Al-Qaeda. This magazine is one if the many ways this organization uses the internet to reach an audience. This magazine has also even showed how to make bombs,

In this day and age, the internet has allowed ISIS to become one of the most backed extremist groups to exist. As put by Professor Alfred Hermida, ISIS “targets messages designed to spread terror among western audiences while recruiting followers with tweets aimed at an ideological Muslim world.” The San Bernardino shootings were an exemplary case of this; in which gunwoman Tashfeen Malik has subsequently been found to have written posts agreeing with vicious jihadism and pledged loyalty to ISIS after accessing online information about them, despite living in the USA and never showing any indication of her radicalisation in person. This demonstrates a different difficulty to tackle: instead of accusing refugees of transporting terrorism to the West, it is time to stop the spread of jihadism on the new, virtual world: the

Great post this week, it was very interesting. The accessibility to the internet has definitely enhanced the capabilities of terrorist organizations to be able to reach individuals that otherwise would not have been possible in the past. In the United States most people have smart phones that gives easy access to the internet to millions of people. While terrorist organizations know that a large quantity of people will not be pleased or interested in seeing their radicalized content online, they also know that a small part may find it appealing. Therefore, the larger the audience, the more opportunities they have to recruit other people. That is why terrorist organizations are publishing content online in many different languages in an effort

During the age of globalization modern technology has made terrorism global by putting communication in the hands of even the poor and disenfranchised. Among them are terrorists who convert and circulate information via the internet. Technology also allow terror cells to map and monitor potential targets.

For many Americans, September 11th 2001 gave insight for the first time about Islamic extremism and that even America was vulnerable to attacks on a grand scale. Aside from promoting fear among Americans, the motivations backing the attacks and the messages expressed thereafter through broadcasted beheadings, kidnappings, suicide bombings, and other attempted attacks in and outside of United States borders have attracted some American citizens to join the global jihad. In recent months, the Al Qaeda splinter group ISIS have made headlines for their recruitment of American citizens unbiased of age, gender, or ethnicity. In fact, associations to the group inside the United States are targeting individuals to join the cause. To understand why the idea of radical Islam is so appealing to individuals, it is important to first identify the history and grievances associated with the west that created the foundation for their religious ideology, ultimately leading to the only course of action being violence. With their grievances towards the West builing up long before that fateful day in September 2001, and how the opportunity of utilizing the internet and media to spread their message globally, at the click of a mouse. (FIX THIS!!!!!!!!) “what was once an obscure movement on the other side of the world has become the subject of unprecedented attention.”

ISIS' propaganda arm has created brochures on how to get there and what to pack, and recruiters can arrange for an ISIS member to meet new recruits in Turkey and help them across the Syrian border. The idea is to remove potential barriers of entry into ISIS rather than create them, helping huge numbers of foreign fighters to swell their forces in the Middle East.” This support the idea of how social media is the main way of recruiting of this organization and how it is very effective in preparing new recruits. A study from University of Chicago and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Counter-Terrorism Policy Center established an idea among people in the United States thought to be ISIS advocates, being U.S.-born citizens and involved their own society.

Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram; social media is one of the biggest fads in this present day. People use these apps to stay up to date on all the latest news and events that their friends are doing. Some might even say that people nowadays are almost obsessed with social media. But, what people don't realize is that one of their pictures could be stored right next to a video of a beheading. The Islamic state’s most powerful weapon in their fight against the western countries is social media.

The Islamic State of Iraq utilizes social media to their advantage in order to recruit and spread propaganda. Why did they post a hit list of U.S. service members on social media? Some argue that their tactics and techniques are meant to strike fear into people while drawing them into radicalization. The effects of ISIS uploading data on social media websites creates a psychological effect on people while also giving away capabilities of the organization during their cyber warfare progression. Some of their capabilities that they claim to have is the ability to hack government servers and databases but there is a lack of evidence supporting that claim. While most of the names on the list can be found on the public domain, ISIS claimed to have received the names through hacking government systems. The effects of this event supports recruitment for the

The information age has had enormous and very positive impacts on globalization. Nations are able to interact with each other in ways that were not possible before the emergence of the internet. However, with the good, there is always bad, and in the case of technological advances and interconnectedness, domestic extremism has been able to exploit the benefits and convenience of the internet and globalization to harm the American society from within. Globalization and technology have improved the possibilities for domestic extremists to recruit, operate, and communicate from anywhere in the world. The internet has become a fundamental part of every domestic extremist organization in the U.S., and they can quickly mobilize entire communities and propagate messages in a matter of minutes all around the country.

However, Director Nicholas Rasmussen of the National Counterterrorism Center estimates that an estimated three thousand and four hundred westerners have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) (as cited by Yan, 2015). The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (as cited by Perez, 2015) estimates that one hundred and eighty Americans have tried to leave the country, which pales in comparison to citizens of France and the United Kingdom. Muslim youth are not the only youth who become radicalized the problem supersedes religion. However, as terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Boko Haram dominate today’s conversation, looking at the radicalization process from this perspective will help us understand the effects of radicalization on youth. Therefore, this paper seeks to understand what radicalization is, why young people become radicalized, how it works, the mechanisms, and propose counter-radicalization strategies and

According to the lessons and reading this week, terrorism as we define it now began in the late 1960’s. The unprecedented advances in communication methods since then can be summed up with one word: exponential. In a space of about four decades the communication methods of the planet has expanded vastly. Back in the late 1960's, methods of communication would have been just a few venues: television, print media, and radio. Now, due to the explosive impact of the Internet and the affordability of portable personal tech devices such as “smart phones”, tablets, and laptop computers means anyone with a connection anywhere can connect to people and information, at any time. But, the deeper issues of the contemporary media and the escalating incidents of violence from terrorists are much more troubling. Who, exactly, benefits from the ever-present media coverage of these hateful acts? Is it the terrorist who gain the publicity he craves or is the media channel that seeks increased viewership and ratings? The implications of the assigned readings this week go far beyond just giving these violent cowards a stage and their obligatory moment of fame.

“The ISIS Twitter Census” a study out of the Brookings Institution, used a sample of 20,000 ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts, to construct a snapshot of this “dark network”.

Now that the fear of the two greatest powers has subsided, we have turned to a different kind of fear that encompasses the entire world. This is the fear of the modern terrorist and their use of technology. Terrorists have been using the internet, because it exhibits the ease of use. The internet uses very little to no regulations or forms of control. The internet offers vast amount of worldwide attention. Text, pictures, and audiovisual sources assist the terrorist. One such terrorist group or organization is the, “Peru’s Tupak-Amaru (MRTA).” (Weimann, How Modern