Social media and terrorism

Social media and terrorism

Today the world is facing an impressive level of violence caused by the Islamic extremism. Statistics have shown than over 30 000 from over 100 different countries have travelled to the conflict zone in Iraq or Syria to participate in Jihad. These numbers are only the result of the fact that terrorist groups such as AL QAIDA and ISIS use social media websites to promote their ideology, recruit members and raise funds. Indeed, this propaganda had a big role in promoting terrorist attacks.

This fact leads us to ask ourselves: How social media websites participated in increasing the importance of terrorism in the world?

The qualities of social media networks have made it the best place for terrorist groups’ propaganda . These platforms are cheap , accessible and very quick. Terrorists groups are now able to talk with everybody . They can influence teenagers and kids who are using these websites and as we know social networking is the main activity young people aged 16-24 use the internet for, something which extremist groups are well aware of. The results of this strategy were very brilliant. For example

Al Qaida branch in Syria have a total of 200 000 followers now and it continue increasing, we can also add that there is 90 000 pro ISIS tweets every day.

In terms of recruitment , the internet is the perfect place for terrorist groups to find and target future members. Online, it is easy to remain anonymous and to keep recruitment a secret process. Identities are easily masked, and information is easily transmitted.A wide variety of online platforms are used to find potential recruits, including Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Then recruiters spend thousands of hours engaging with these individuals, keeping in regular touch and slowly ushering them towards the theological concepts ISIS is built on.

We can also explain the fast rise of Islamic extremism by the fact that members of these terrorist groups doesn’t have anymore to travel to the conflict zone for training .They can engage real time with jihadists on Twitter, watch ISIS’s murderous propaganda on YouTube, view jihadi selfies on Instagram, or read religious justifications for the killing of civilians on Facebook.

Terrorist groups also use social media platforms and applications to coordinate funding for their activities. The Internet's easy access and relative anonymity allows terrorist groups to solicit online donations from both supporters and unsuspecting donors who believe they are supporting a humanitarian or charitable activity.On March 22, for example, the Nafir al Aqsa posted a solicitation for funding on Twitter. It cites a hadith – a saying attributed to Islam's prophet Muhammad – that giving money to those waging jihad is as good as doing it yourself.

As a conclusion, we can say that social media ,with all the services that it offers, is the number one supporter of terrorism and I think that the people in charge of these platforms should restrict the access to this last to avoid terrorist groups influencing people.

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