- 16/07/2017
- Category: Commentaries
The connection between media and terrorism has long been well acknowledged. Media plays a major role in achieving the aim of terrorism: to provoke irrational fear among large numbers of people to influence policymakers and thus advance their goals. The coincident rise of mass media and democracy in the late 20th century triggered the new form of terrorism using traditional TV broadcasts as their primary platform to spread propaganda. After years of success, another shift in media trends occurred during the last decade: the beginning of social media era. Subsequently, this revolution changes the strategy among terrorist groups to a new, attaining unprecedented popularity.
Consequently, this revolution of media has a detrimental effect on the effort of global counterterrorism. While it is evident that terrorist militant groups have made use of the traditional television broadcast to spread its ideology through horrifying images and videos to spread its propaganda, the rise of social media in the recent years quickly being recognized by these groups as a new strategy in advancing their objectives. New technologies have not only allowed terrorist groups to create propaganda with bewildering ease; they have also made it much easier to distribute these films and images to an even wider audience.[i]
The new trend of violent propaganda has provoked several debates about the role of ISIS videos in attracting militants, as well as the degree to which the media itself is responsible for providing terrorism with the “oxygen of publicity.”[ii] To put it into perspective, a total of 657 terrorist attacks occurred during the first half of 2017.[iii] This means that, on average, 3.5 terrorism related incident occurred daily around the world. Global expert agrees that the increase of this number has a lot to do with the success of militant groups in using social media to recruit new fighters.[iv] Also, the previous study conducted by the University of Haifa correspondingly concluded that 90 percent of organized terrorism on the internet is being carried out through social media, which allows terrorist organizations to be active in recruiting new fighters without geographical restrictions.[v]
These facts point out that global counterterrorism effort should not stop on state law enforcement and international security cooperation. The biggest challenge might lie in social media platform’s strategies to prevent the spread of extremist ideas online. These platforms have to develop a measure to counter militant groups’ complex online propaganda through a technology that can break the information chain on terrorism-related contents on social media and other messaging networks. In another word, social media corporations need to figure out an approach to tackle the spread of terrorism through its product.
In response to this growing concern, YouTube recently announced that it is going to offer new vision into its commitment to eliminate terrorism content as a response to political pressure in Europe to militant groups using the social network for propaganda and recruiting.[vi] Previously, Facebook also announced that it is introducing four new measures to tackle the spread of terrorist material online, stating that the threat poses an increasing challenge and that ‘more immediate action needs to be taken’ on mid-May this year.[vii] These measures were followed by the establishment of ‘The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism” by several social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube. This forum aimed to “formalize and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the UN.” [viii]
In the increasingly Internet connected world, social media provides extremist militant groups with a low-cost and highly accessible podium to spread its wings. It is, therefore, the corporations’ responsibility to answer the challenge of preventing terrorist’s ideology to reach out to social media users. Subsequently, these platforms have the important responsibility in stopping communication chain between actors involved in the spreading of terrorism. Technological advancement might provide a sophisticated response to tackling extremism and radicalism in the cyberspace.
picture: pixabay
[i] Burke, J. (2017). How the changing media is changing terrorism | Jason Burke. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/25/how-changing-media-changing-terrorism [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].
[ii] Burke, J. (2017). How the changing media is changing terrorism | Jason Burke. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/25/how-changing-media-changing-terrorism [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].
[iii] Esri and PeaceTech Lab, 2017 Terrorist Attack Map, https://storymaps.esri.com/stories/terrorist-attacks/?year=2017, [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017]
[iv] The Telegraph (2017). How terrorists are using social media. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11207681/How-terrorists-are-using-social-media.html [Accessed 10 Jul. 2017].
[v] CBC News. (2017). Terrorist groups recruiting through social media. [online] Available at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/terrorist-groups-recruiting-through-social-media-1.1131053 [Accessed 10 Jul. 2017].
[vi] The Guardian. (2017). YouTube introduces new measures to curb extremist video online. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/more-must-be-done-about-extremist-content-online-says-google [Accessed 10 Jul. 2017].
[vii] McCann, K. (2017). Facebook using artificial intelligence to combat terrorist propaganda. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/16/facebook-using-artificial-intelligence-combat-terrorist-propaganda/ [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].
[viii] Fioretti, J. (2017). Social media giants step up joint fight against extremist content. [online] Reuters. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-extremism-idUSKBN19H20A [Accessed 9 Jul. 2017].
