In this day and age, it is normal to see organizations take to social media to engage people for various purposes: attract top talent, conduct marketing campaigns and what not.
On the façade, this sounds like any other enterprise. However, the organization we’re talking about here is ISIS.
Within the past half a year, the terrorist organization has taken to social media to promote its campaign.
And how does it do so? By hijacking “seemingly benign hashtags” on Twitter and issuing messages in various languages. One such example was #WorldCup2014 where the propaganda of #ISIS was spread via the hashtag in English, French, Russian and Turkish.
Such a move is strategically intelligent for the terrorist organization to appeal to a younger demographic, making the organization “look cool” to “young and angry Muslim men” who have been “susceptible to indoctrination”. So far, this has resulted in the militia being “well-supplied” with a sizeable fighting strength.
Evidently, the clever use of social media such as the hijacking of Twitter hashtags have proven successful thus far. Just a look at the number of foreign fighters in the force would suffice in making this point clear.
But my question is: is this a smart move for ISIS?
Think of social media as a relational database.
Each field on Facebook or Twitter is just one piece of information closer to tracking down ISIS militants. The “friends” who are displayed on the Facebook page of ISIS can be monitored by anti-terrorist agencies. This effectively gives the law enforcement agencies more leads to bringing ISIS down.
So after all, was it a smart idea for ISIS to broadcast their activities on social media and make them visible for all to see?
I guess this is the stage where the plan backfires.
Adopted from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-shouldnt-stop-terrorists-from-tweeting/2014/10/09/106939b6-4d9f-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html
Photo taken from: http://news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/entry/192-follow-isis-on-twitter-a-special-report-on-the-use-of-social-media-by-jihadists