In this blog, I want to talk about the role of influence through social media. Nowadays a lot of people are on social media platforms. From vloggers on Youtube till recruiters on LinkedIn, basically everyone is connected in some way. On one side, it provides a way for people to connect through contacts they would not make in the real world. One the other side, this is not always as great as it sounds. One of the main threats for the west recognized the potential of attracting young foreigners for their case. The dangerous thoughts of Islamic State (IS) that were being spread through online platforms to insecure teenagers that felt left out in their personal lives and therefore started to radicalize in their beliefs towards their religion and adopted the beliefs of IS (Van Loon & Nieber, 2015; Meleagrou-Hitchens, 2018).
IS was specialized in propaganda that was tailored specifically for different audiences. Many of the young westerners that were recruited, became ideologized by the promise of a caliphate where the rules of god stand above the rules made by men (Melegrou-Hitchens, 2018). The violence displayed in the decapitation movies IS produced, in combination with promising youngsters a sense of belonging, made IS’s recruitment process extremely successful compared to other recruitment initiatives by similar jihadist groups. Youngsters were given the greatest honour on earth, being a soldier of the caliphate.
It was mainly men that joined the cause of IS (Melegrou-Hitchens, 2018). This can be led back to the difference in how men and women use social media. Men use it mainly for information purposes, while women use it to maintain contacts with their friends (Van Loon & Nieber, 2015). I tried to put out the potential dangours of the connected society whit the example of IS. I would like to hear your comments on the blog!
Sources:
Van Loon, M. & Nieber, L. (2015). Helft jongeren ervaart negatieve invloed social media. [online] Availabe at: [https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/11/20/helft-jongeren-ervaart-negatieve-invloed-sociale-media-a1405590] Accessed on 29-09-2018.
Meleagrou-Hitchens, A. (2018). Recruitment by the Islamic State
Hi Ton! It was interesting to read your post. Terrorists using social media for recruitment purposes is indeed a prominent problem that could have occurred only in the 21st century: now our wars are also fought on the ‘battlefields’ in the cyberspace. All this comes down to one question: how much control should there be?
On the one hand, more control might further decrease the privacy we have online – plenty of people already have an ‘FBI paranoia’, which peaked after Edward Snowden’s leaks. Also, if extremists’ accounts are monitored and blocked, social media platforms will require a considerable increase in staff or R&D expenditures on specialized AI technology (like the kind that Facebook is using for extremist posts detection).
On the other hand, one can always argue that it is about individuals that are susceptible to the terrorists’ propaganda after all. As you mention, a lot of young people were recruited over the past few years. Maybe the answer to the problem is as easy as a better engagement of youth into the community and more supervision at schools.
Thank you for your comment Mariia. I fully agree with you on the social engagement part. However, it has proved to be very difficult to supervise the kids at school. Radicalization is very difficult to observe, especially in quiet teenagers. Since the recruitment for the caliphate mainly flows through social media, supervision mainly on search terms used by the teenagers would, for me, be some sort of solution. I think this is already happening, but by knowing who is doing what in the network, anti-radicalization can be achieved.
Last week there was also a successful cancellation of a terrorist attack in the Netherlands. I believe the police already tried their best, and succeeded, monitoring social media to stop anything from happening.