Terrorism and social media

rdf:langString Terrorism and social media

rdf:langString Terrorism and social media refers to the use of social media platforms to radicalize and recruit violent and non-violent extremists. According to some researchers the convenience, affordability, and broad reach of social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, terrorist groups and individuals have increasingly used social media to further their goals, recruit members, and spread their message. Attempts have been made by various governments and agencies to thwart the use of social media by terrorist organizations. Terror groups take to social media because it’s cheap, accessible, and facilitates quick access to a lot of people. Social media allow them to engage with their networks. In the past it wasn’t so easy for these groups to engage with the people they wanted to whereas social media allows terrorists to release their messages right to their intended audience and interact with them in real time. "Spend some time following the account, and you realize that you’re dealing with a real human being with real ideas- albeit boastful, hypocritical, violent ideas". Al- Qaeda has been noted as being as being one of the terror groups that uses social media the most extensively. "While almost all terrorist groups have websites, al qaeda is the first to fully exploit the internet. This reflects al Qaeda’s unique characteristics." Despite the risks of making statements, such as enabling governments to locate terror group leaders, terror leaders communicate regularly with video and audio messages which are posted on the website and disseminated on the internet. ISIS uses social media to their advantage when releasing threatening videos of beheadings. ISIS uses this tactic to scare normal people on social media. Similarly, Western domestic terrorists also use social media and technology to spread their ideas.