On the evening of March 1, 2011, Arid Uka, an Albanian Muslim living in Germany, was watching videos on YouTube. Like many before him, he watched a video clip that presented the gruesome rape of a Muslim woman by US soldiers—a clip edited and posted on YouTube for jihadi propaganda purposes. Within hours of watching the video, Uka took a handgun and boarded a bus at Frankfurt Airport, where he killed two US servicemen and wounded two others.
Uka’s Internet activity—most obviously, his Facebook profile—revealed a growing interest in jihadist content. His increasing self-radicalization led up to the point where, after watching the aforementioned video, he decided to take action in an alleged war in defense of Muslims. Ulka was not a member of a terrorist organization, nor did he visit one of the infamous training camps for terrorists. His entire process of self-radicalization, from his early attraction to jihadi preaching to his preparations for the final deadly mission, was performed online (Weimann 2014a).
Arid Uka is a typical case of new media creating new terrorists. Internet-savvy terrorists have learned to use the newest online platforms, commonly known as “new media” or “social media,” for their efforts. This chapter examines interactive online communication on social media venues and how it is used by terrorists and their supporters, with a particular focus on the leading platforms of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The analysis is based on the database collected during a 15-year project of monitoring thousands of terrorist websites and online forums, chatrooms, and social networking sites. Given the rather broad presence and use of new online media by terrorists, it will present only illustrative examples, highlighting the most recent developments.
What Is Social Media?
Social media refers to the interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks (Ahlqvist et al. 2008). Social media depends on new communication technologies such as mobile and web-based networks to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, cocreate, discuss, and modify user-generated content. As a result, social media are immersive. When we are on a social media site, we feel that we are virtually together with our friends, relatives, and colleagues. Online interaction brings people closer, faster, by allowing users to contact each other rapidly online and then, when desired, move offline. In the case of two people, each seeking a companion, the result may be a happy union. In the case of aspiring terrorists, the result may be less positive.
Social media differs from traditional or conventional media in many aspects such as interactivity, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence (Morgan, Jones, and Hodges 2012). Unlike the “one-to-many” communication of traditional media such as newspapers, television, and film—where the audience might be virtually limitless but where a small cohort of established institutions selectively disseminates information—social media enables anyone to publish or access information. With social media, information consumers also act as communicators, vastly expanding the number of information transmitters in the media landscape (Amble 2012). This comparatively inexpensive and accessible process has lowered the barriers to enter communication markets by letting in small, diffused sets of communicators and groups, a form of distribution known as the “long tail” (Anderson 2006).
The growing use of social media is impressive. In the United States, the total time spent on social media increased by 37 percent, from 88 billion minutes in July 2011 to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 (Nielsen 2012). Popular social media tools and platforms include the following:
• Blogs: A platform for casual dialogue and discussions on a specific topic or opinion.
• Facebook: The world’s largest social network, with more than 1.3 billion users as of June 2014 (Facebook 2014). Users create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including status updates. Brands create pages and Facebook users can “like” brand pages.
• Twitter: A social networking/micro-blogging platform that allows groups and individuals to stay connected through the exchange of short status messages, with a 140-character limit.
• YouTube and Vimeo: Video hosting and watching websites. The 2012 Noel-Levitz E-Expectations Report found that 62 percent of high school juniors and seniors watch YouTube videos at least once a week (Noel-Levitz 2012).
• Flickr: An image and video hosting website and online community. Photos posted on Flickr can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.
• Instagram: A free photo and video sharing app that allows users to apply digital filters, frames, and special effects to their photos and then share them on a variety of social networking sites.
• LinkedIn Groups: A professional social networking website where groups of professionals with similar areas of interest can share and participate in conversations about things happening in their fields.
Social media is often associated with benefits such as creating new social connections and improving communication, yet such positive outcomes are not always the case. An increase in social media offers and usage has been correlated with an increase in negative, abusive practices and outcomes such as cyberbullying, online sexual predators and sexual abuse, and more. Terrorism is certainly one of the darkest sides of the new social media.
When New Terrorism Met New Media
Before the existence of the Internet, terrorists’ social networking was based on conventional human interaction that took place in key locations such as schools, marketplaces, religious centers, and houses of worship. Consequently, for traditional terrorist organizations like the first generation of al-Qaeda, critical social networking hubs consisted of secret meeting places, guesthouses, extremist mosques, and fixed training camps. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, these traditional hubs were quickly targeted, and in the face of constant pressure from counterterrorism agencies, al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and other terrorist organizations have moved to cyberspace and to new online platforms.
Terrorists have three major reasons to use these platforms. First, these platforms are by far the most popular venues for a mainstream audience in an increasingly digital age. As the most important purposes of terrorist Internet use are propaganda, radicalization, and recruitment, it makes sense to follow the mainstream audience. Second, social media companies provide a user-friendly and reliable service for free. Hosting a separate personal or organization website requires time, money, and a slightly higher level of Internet expertise. In addition, once online, terrorist websites tend to come under attack by law enforcement agencies or civil activists, making it more difficult for the operators to maintain a stable service. By using a social media platform as a host, terrorists can mitigate some of these effects. Finally, whereas the older versions of terrorist websites effectively were waiting for visitors to arrive, a social networking approach allows terrorists to reach their target audiences and virtually “knock on their doors” (Weimann 2014a).
Social networking online is becoming more attractive for terrorists who are targeting potential members and followers. These types of virtual communities are growing increasingly popular all over the world, especially among younger demographics. Social networking sites allow terrorists to disseminate propaganda to an impressionable age bracket that might empathize with their cause and possibly agree to join. Jihadist terrorist groups especially target youths for propaganda, incitement, and recruitment purposes. Increasingly, terrorist groups and their sympathizers are using predominately youth-dominated, Western online communities like Facebook, MySpace, and Second Life and their Arabic equivalents to reach out to the younger generation. Counterterrorism expert Anthony Bergin says that terrorists use these websites as recruitment tools “in the same way a pedophile might look at those sites to potentially groom would-be victims” (quoted in
The Advertiser 2008).
Many social media users join interest groups, and these groups enable terrorists to target users whom they might be able to manipulate. These users often accept people as “friends” on the social media site whether or not they know them, thereby giving strangers access to personal information and photos. Some people even communicate with the strangers and establish virtual friendships. Terrorists can therefore apply the narrowcasting strategy (see
chapter 2) used on the broader Internet to social networking sites. They can tailor their name, accompanying default image, and information on a group message board to fit the profile of a particular social group. Interest groups also provide terrorists with a list of predisposed recruits or sympathizers. In the same way that marketing groups can view a member’s information to decide which products to target on their webpages, terrorist groups can view people’s profiles to decide who they are going to target and how they should configure the message.
It is evident that as social networking has quickly become a ubiquitous part of many people’s lives worldwide, it too has enjoyed increased significance as an amplifier for violent extremist viewpoints, and as a way for terrorists and their supporters to identify each other and build new relationships (Kohlmann 2011). In March 2010, one user on al-Qaeda’s Fallujah Islamic Network online forum declared, “The least we can do to support the Mujahideen is to distribute their statements and releases.” He added, “We wish from the brothers to also distribute the statement via YouTube and widely … and on Facebook.” The user offered a cautionary note about using Facebook: “The suggested method is to always access it via proxy, otherwise you’re in danger. Make one email on Yahoo that’s dedicated for the [online] battle only. After creating the email, register on Facebook under a pseudonym with the email you created, and via which the account will be activated. Search for all the profiles and groups.”
1In their closed forums, jihadists offer sophisticated reflections on how to strategically exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages of the new media for the sake of their cause. On January 4, 2012, on the leading jihadist forums al-Fida and Shumukh al-Islam, a comprehensive paper on “Electronic Jihad” was published. The paper provided an analysis as well as an overview of the goals and means of using the Internet. In a remarkable conclusion, the author stated:
[…] any Muslim who intends to do jihad against the enemy electronically, is considered in one way or another a mujahid, as long as he meets the conditions of jihad such as the sincere intention and the goal of serving Islam and defending it, even if he is far away from the battlefield. He is thus participating in jihad indirectly as long as the current contexts require such jihadi participation that has effective impact on the enemy (SITE Monitoring Service 2012b).
Considering that the divine status of a “mujahid” is presumably one of the key attractions for young people to participate in terrorist actions, this conclusion is striking. For militant Islamists, the threshold to give up a familiar, comfortable life to travel to an actual battle zone and risk injury or death is understandably high and keeps many from doing so. However, the threshold for engaging in “electronic jihad” is far lower. If the attitude prevails that, in the eyes of God and the people, online activism is a proper, respectable, and sufficient form of jihad, one can expect further increasing efforts in online propaganda (and cyberattacks)—which, in turn, may lead to even more radicalized individuals and ultimately new attacks. This type of call for electronic jihad has not gone unanswered: in July 2013, the Al-Battar Media Battalion was established, and claimed to be exclusively devoted to disseminate propaganda in “the service of jihad and the mujahideen” (SITE Monitoring Service 2013d).
The emergence of special groups dedicated to online activism but not affiliated with any particular group, such as the Al-Battar Media Battalion and the Nukhbat Al-I’lam Al-Jihadi (Jihadi Media Elites), marks a new way-point in jihadists’ professional use of the new media. Individuals such as Jose Pimentel or the user known as “Jihad Princess,” who apparently never actually engaged in jihadist violence (although Pimentel tried; see
chapter 3) but nevertheless enjoyed celebrity-like status online because of the manifold, high-quality material they posted, can similarly be regarded as indicators of this trend (SITE Monitoring Service 2011c). Yet terrorists are well aware of the risks involved in this online activism. A member of an English-language jihadi forum issued a warning, reminding readers that a Facebook network would allow security agencies to trace entire groups of jihadists:
Don’t make a network in Facebook … Then Kuffar will know every friend you have or had in the past. They will know location, how you look, what you like, they will know everything! Join Facebook if you want and use it to keep in touch with friends and brothers far away but not as a network. (SITE Monitoring Service 2009)
A more thorough assessment of this approach to online terrorism requires more in-depth assessment of terrorist uses of three specific social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Facebook Terrorism
Facebook is a free online social networking service. After registering, users can compile their personal profile out of standardized data, self-composed texts, pictures, and videos. Facebook offers convenient functions to interact with other users, such as becoming “friends” with them, which, depending on the users’ setting, may allow access to additional private material on one’s profile. Using Facebook, it is easy to comment on other users’ content, or to open up forums or groups on specific topics.
Membership within the international Facebook community has boomed in recent years. Facebook is currently the world’s most popular social networking website, with an estimated 1.11 billion users worldwide, of whom the majority (54 percent) frequent Facebook on a regular basis. The average age of a Facebook user is about 30 years, which includes a 66 percent membership increase within the Middle East and a 23 percent increase in Asia (Associated Press 2013). Terrorists have taken note of the trend and have set up Facebook profiles as well. The main motivation for terrorists to use Facebook has been properly outlined by the terrorists themselves:
This [Facebook] is a great idea, and better than the forums. Instead of waiting for people to [come to you so you can] inform them, you go to them and teach them! … [I] mean, if you have a group of 5,000 people, with the press of a button you [can] send them a standardized message. I entreat you, by God, to begin registering for Facebook as soon as you [finish] reading this post. Familiarize yourselves with it. This post is a seed and a beginning, to be followed by serious efforts to optimize our Facebook usage. Let’s start distributing Islamic jihadi publications, posts, articles, and pictures. Let’s anticipate a reward from the Lord of the Heavens, dedicate our purpose to God, and help our colleagues. (Quoted in Department of Homeland Security 2010)
Noting the prevalent use of Facebook globally, on December 9, 2008, a jihadist posted a call for “Facebook Invasion” on the password-protected jihadist Al-Faloja forum. The posting notes the “great success” thus far in publishing jihadist media on YouTube, and urges jihadists to maintain that campaign on Facebook as well. Through the “Facebook Invasion,” the jihadist hopes to reach Muslims and Americans, and “fight the media offensive on jihadist media, its forums, and its websites.” The posting also included images detailing the registration process, adding friends, and setting up groups. The “Facebook Invasion” has argued for it as “a good way to first, reach the misled American people, and second, to reach the vast people’s base among Muslims. It may be a new technique and a new field that we did not wage before, or for the security of the site and the arrest of many among the organizers of strikes. If it is a new technique, we will use it and master it, with permission from Allah” (quoted in Kennedy and Weimann 2011).
Although the often-conspiratorial jihadist forums are frequented mainly by hardcore jihadist sympathizers, the mainstream Islamic youth—whose radicalization is a key concern of jihadist terrorists—is on Facebook. Accordingly, a primary purpose of Facebook is to link occasional viewers of jihadist contents to the more hardcore closed forums. This is most obvious in cases where jihadist forums maintain Facebook pages under their own names (Department of Homeland Security 2010). A prime example is the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum, which mirrors all of its content to a Facebook page named “Ansar al-Mujahideen Network” via a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed program. It is widely believed that for the recruitment of terrorists, social ties are more important than genuine ideological convictions. This structure coincides with the underlying design of Facebook, where a high number of friends signifies a user’s high status, and therefore friend requests are often accepted indiscriminately. Terrorists thereby have the opportunity to actively approach and recruit suitable users. Facebook’s function as a gateway is well illustrated by the self-contradictory profiles of nascent terrorists that depict their split between the normal and jihadist worlds. In one instance, a Swedish suicide bomber “liked” the expressions “the Islamic Caliphate State,” “the Islamic Day of Judgement,” and “I love my Apple iPad” (Amble 2012).
Generally, two types of Facebook profiles with terrorist content can be identified: official and unofficial profiles. “Official” pages are often introduced with a statement issued by the respective group in the usual forums and media. An example is the “Al-Thabaat” page, which appeared on May 5, 2013, and in its “About” section straightforwardly described itself as “Jihadi page for the group, Ansar al-Islam” (SITE Monitoring Service 2013c). Unsurprisingly, the page offers links to the official Ansar al-Islam forum and Twitter account. “Unofficial” profiles, by contrast, are mostly maintained by sympathizers who disseminate propaganda or instruction material. However, these breeds of profiles can be interrelated. An example of this interrelation is the Facebook page of Yemeni journalist Abd al-Razzaq al-Jamal, who repeatedly had posted on his page exclusive al-Qaeda material by others, or posted it himself. Included in al-Jamal’s postings were excerpts of the upcoming issue of al-Qaeda’s online
Inspire magazine and a letter claiming full responsibility for an attack in Yemen (MEMRI Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project 2013b).
According to a 2010 special report by the US Department of Homeland Security, terrorists use Facebook for several purposes:
• As a way to share operational and tactical information, such as bomb recipes, weapon maintenance and use, tactical shooting, etc.
• As a gateway to extremist sites and other online radical content by linking on Facebook group pages and in discussion forums.
• As a media outlet for terrorist propaganda and extremist ideological messages.
• As a wealth of information for remote reconnaissance for targeting purposes. (Department of Homeland Security 2010)
A wide range of instruction material is disseminated on Facebook, including tactical shooting and handling instructions for AK-47 assault rifles, manuals for manufacturing improvised explosive devices, and several chemical recipes for poisonous substances. This material was disseminated through Facebook groups affiliated with jihadist content. Additionally, to a certain degree terrorists will use Facebook for operative purposes to both coordinate and advertise their actions. For instance, in May 2013 the Tunisian group Ansar al-Sharia posted a map with close-to-real-time information about police checkpoints, and possible routes to avoid them, in order to direct its followers to an illegal conference. The Afghan Cyber Army is another example of a group that makes particular operational use of Facebook. The group, whose motto (or one of whose mottos) is “Live for Afghanistan or leave Afghanistan,” actively maintains what it claims are official accounts on Facebook and YouTube. In its Facebook “About” section, the group says that it was formed in January 2005; that it is located in Kabul City, Afghanistan; and that it aims to “secure Afghan Cyber Space from cyber criminals and Afghanistan enemies.” During 2013, the Afghan Cyber Army hacked the official US government portal usa.gov, US bank and credit card accounts and more than a million US Facebook accounts, and other US websites. It also has posted its claims of successful hacks on its Facebook page, sometimes accompanied by reports from various media confirming its claims. On November 15, 2013, the group claimed on its Facebook page that it had hacked a number of Pakistani websites related to airlines, insurance companies, e-commerce, real estate, and health, and warned that it would be hacking many thousands more (Stalinsky and Sosnow 2013a).
In addition to these specific examples of terrorist action, it is feared that terrorists could use Facebook for remote target reconnaissance. Terrorists can use social networking sites such as Facebook to monitor military personnel. Many soldiers unwittingly post detailed information about themselves, their careers, family members, date of birth, present locations, and photos of colleagues and weaponry. Even if the information does not give details about the logistics of troop movements, it could potentially endanger the friends and relatives of the military and security personnel. In 2008, in an unprecedented New Year “high priority” warning, the British domestic security service MI5 asked British troops to remove all personal details they had posted over the Christmas period on the Facebook, MySpace, and Friends Reunited social networking sites. MI5’s Internet analysts had discovered al-Qaeda operatives had been monitoring the sites to gather details that could be used to launch terror attacks (Sammy67 2008). Both US and Canadian troops have been asked to exclude any information from their profiles that might link them with the military, and have been warned about posting certain details or photos on their social networking profile pages. Israeli intelligence also determined that Hezbollah had been monitoring Facebook to find potentially sensitive information about Israeli military movements and intelligence that could harm Israeli national security. An Israeli intelligence official admitted that “Facebook is a major resource for terrorists, seeking to gather information on soldiers and IDF [Israel Defense Forces] units and the fear is soldiers might even unknowingly arrange to meet an Internet companion who in reality is a terrorist” (Middle East Times 2008). In fact, the fate of the Israeli teenager Ofir Rahum offers an example of how social media can be used to conduct an actual terrorist plot. In January 2001, following a number of online exchanges with a woman who claimed to want to meet him for romantic purposes, Rahum was lured to enter the West Bank, where Palestininan terrorists were waiting to murder him (Hershman 2001).
Maybe more than any other jihadist group, Hezbollah has learned to capitalize on Facebook’s accessibility and global usage. As early as 2008, Hezbollah had established a presence on Facebook, which has since grown into hundreds of pages, available in no fewer than nine languages and with tens of thousands of fans. This Facebook network of Hezbollah pages includes groups dedicated to Hezbollah itself, as well as to its leaders (such as Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and assassinated security head Imad Mughniyeh), and helps to spread Hezbollah propaganda around the world (SITE Monitoring Service 2014c). Hezbollah’s international reach on Facebook is evident in pages like the Indonesian-language Hezbollah page founded on March 29, 2010, which has attracted hundreds of fans; the Turkish-language “Hizbullah” founded on November 10, 2010, which already has more than 140 fans; and many more Hezbollah Facebook pages in French, Hebrew, Albanian, Spanish, Urdu, and Persian. The vast majority of Hezbollah pages, however, are in Arabic or English. In these pages, Hezbollah’s versatility is demonstrated, as the group and its supporters have created pages not only for the organization itself, but also for its leaders. Hezbollah secretary general Nasrallah has inspired dozens of groups and profiles, some with members or friends exceeding 1,700. According to a 2011 SITE Monitoring Service report, updated in 2014, “In all, Hezbollah’s Facebook network has perhaps 100,000 fans spread out across several hundred pages” (SITE Monitoring Service 2014c, 3) The leading Facebook pages are “We Are Hizbullah,” “Hezbollah,” and “Hezbollah will not be stopped,” which serve as archetypes for Hezbollah Facebook pages in general. “We Are Hizbullah” focuses on official propaganda from Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s media wing, while “Hezbollah will not be stopped” glorifies martyrdom and prominent leaders of Hezbollah. “Hezbollah” is a mix of the two, providing both official media and incitements to violence.
Since 2011, the ongoing uprising in Syria has involved several groups fighting against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Some of these groups are related to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, and some are involved in the global jihadi movement, including a group representing al-Qaeda. These groups are turning to social media such as Facebook for propaganda, psychological warfare, and tutorials on how to use their weapons. Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front), a branch of al-Qaeda operating in Syria, has been designated a terrorist organization by Australia, the United Nations, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Agence France-Presse 2013). The head of the Al-Nusra Front, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, extensively uses Facebook and other online social media. For example, in August 2013 he vowed unrestrained rocket attacks on Alawite communities, alongside attacks on President Assad’s government in revenge for an alleged chemical weapons strike launched by Assad’s army. Al-Golani’s message was posted on Facebook, Twitter, and on the militant websites that usually broadcast the views of al-Qaeda and similar extremist groups. Al-Nusra Front had its own Facebook page (
facebook.com/jalnosra), which contained releases, photographs, and videos from the fighting in Syria, eulogies for the organization’s martyrs, news on the fighting on the ground, and so forth. The apparently most recent trend on Facebook is virtual eulogies for killed (“martyred”) jihadists fighting in Syria, which are often also posted on Flickr (Stalinsky 2013c). These eulogies present the fighters as role models for Muslims and posthumously make them immortal—an appealing prospect for radical Muslims who may be marginalized in their current societies (Jost and Covi 2013).
There is evidence of a growing sophistication in terrorist use of Facebook. On the Shamouhk al-Islam forum on June 2, 2011, a jihadist advised his companions how to attract a more mainstream audience by naming the account in a misleadingly innocent way:
So, for example, the page “I am a Muslim, Praise be to Allah” has 24,522 fans, even though it doesn’t spread valuable materials amongst Muslims. Meanwhile, “The Global Network of Jihad,” doesn’t exceed 500 fans despite the importance of what it publishes. (SITE Monitoring Service 2011a)
Jihadist Facebook pages show such examples of creative naming. For instance, two pages modified the world-famous Egyptian civil rights slogan “We are all Khaled Saeed”
2 to “We are all Usama bin Laden” and “We are all Jabhat al-Nusra.” Furthermore, some online jihadists have even demanded not to maintain a low profile, but to do quite the opposite: They called on users to post the upcoming
Inspire magazine on the Facebook pages of several public US figures or institutions, such as First Lady Michelle Obama or the US Army. They even offered respective link lists and online tutorials. The use of Facebook involves some risk from the terrorists’ perspective. In jihadist forums, users outline relatively sophisticated measures to avoid detection, such as using entirely faked personal data and running anonymization software when browsing. Some even advise against posting jihadist pictures at all (Weimann 2014a, 7).
Facebook’s terms of use prohibit any kind of criminal, violent, or hate content. However, it allows violent images if used for genuine information or “in a manner intended for its users to “condemn” the acts rather than celebrate them” (Oreskovic 2013). First, to enforce this prohibition—however comprehensible—standard, a case-by-case assessment is required, which is simply unreal given the huge overall number of posts on Facebook each day. Second, jihadists often post images of Muslim victims of Western warfare in Afghanistan, Gaza, or Iraq that are indeed meant to condemn the acts but are presented in a context that rather advocates violent “resistance,” including terrorism. In spite of these difficulties, Facebook makes an effort to detect and delete hate content. A respective evaluation conducted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center grades the company’s progress with an “A-” (Pollack 2013). It is notable that hate content spreads much more slowly in the (easier to monitor) English and Spanish sections of Facebook than in the Arabic-language one (Department of Homeland Security 2010). Jihadists do feel the impact of this control: After several of its posts were deleted, the jihadist Islamic News Agency expressed its outrage by “threatening” not to use Facebook any longer. The operators of the page “Third Palestinian Intifada” even felt the need to preventively threaten, rather ambitiously: “If Facebook Blocked This Page … All Muslims Will Boycott Facebook For Ever.” (SITE Monitoring Service 2014d).
Twitter Terrorism
Twitter is a free microblogging service that allows every account holder to distribute messages which are limited in length to 140 characters. These “tweets” can be entirely open to the public or addressed only to those who express their particular interest in an author by “following” him or her (subscribing to his or her tweets). Twitter can be accessed via its website or respective applications for mobile devices. By mid-2013, the approximately 550 million Twitter users tweeted an average total of 9,100 messages every second. Twitter users post tweets at a rate of 250 million per day, and this number is growing rapidly (Statistic Brain 2013). Different from Facebook, Twitter is especially suitable for momentary, occasional users, who account for 72 percent of its users. Forty-three percent of Twitter users are between 18 and 34 years old (PearAnalytics 2009).
Recently, Twitter has emerged as the Internet application most preferred by terrorists, even more popular than self-designed websites or Facebook (Khayat 2013). Twitter is used mostly for propaganda, and to a lesser extent for internal communication. Terrorist use of Twitter has coincided with a recent trend in news coverage that often sacrifices validation and in-depth analysis for the sake of near-real-time coverage. As a result, mainstream media tend to use tweets as a legitimate source, especially when there is a lack of more valid or confirmed sources. Terrorists have repeatedly and methodically exploited this shortcoming for propaganda purposes. A prime example of this approach is the Syrian Electronic Army’s hacking of the Associated Press Twitter account on April 23, 2013. The hackers tweeted the fake breaking news of a bomb attack inside the White House that injured Barack Obama. Immediately after this hoax, Wall Street suffered $136 billion in losses due to panicked investor reactions (Foster 2013).
Twitter can also provide a platform for terrorists to announce their intentions and actions to a broad, international audience. In September 2013, the Somali al-Qaeda–affiliated terrorist group al-Shabaab killed 72 people in a terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya—and, in an historic first, the group used Twitter to not only claim responsibility for it but also give a live commentary on their actions. Several hours into the assault, the following tweet was posted on an al-Shabaab Twitter account: “The Mujahideen (‘holy warriors’) entered Westgate mall today at around noon and they are still inside the mall, fighting the Kenyan kuffar (‘infidels’) inside their own turf.” It was the first confirmation that the attack was the work of al-Shabaab, and journalists around the world quickly reported this information. The group then quickly tweeted its rationale for the attack and gave operational details of the assault—all in real time. According to the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence, which has studied al-Shabaab’s use of social media, the group has been active on Twitter since December 2011, sending out a steady stream of tweets to at one point more than 15,000 followers, including a good number of journalists and terrorism analysts (Bergen 2013).
However, terrorists’ main use for Twitter is to communicate with sympathizers. As Nico Prucha and Ali Fisher (2013) found in their analysis, Twitter has become the main hub for the active dissemination of links directing users to digital content hosted on a range of other platforms. An examination of 76,000 tweets produced by the al-Qaeda–related Al-Nusra Front in Syria revealed that the tweets contained more than 34,000 links, many of which led to other jihadist digital contents (Prucha and Fisher 2013). AlNusra’s official Twitter account, @jbhatalnusra, enjoyed a steady increase in the number of followers. Only one day after its creation on August 25, 2012, the account had more than 24,000 followers. Al-Nusra’s tweets are updates from the various theaters of operations as well as propaganda releases and links to jihadi sites. In a similar vein, the eleventh issue of al-Qaeda’s online
Inspire magazine was publicized on Twitter, after the common practice of uploading the magazine to jihadi forums had become more and more difficult. In another instance, the group Minbar at-Tawhid wal-Jihad extensively used applications such as Twishort and TwitMail to link viewers to additional material, such as comprehensive fatwas. Through this sophisticated use, followers can read legal opinions on topics such as “Leaving one’s country to wage jihad in another country’s battlefield” or “Rulings on using stolen money for jihad” (Stalinsky 2012a). On April 18, 2013, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) even hosted an online press conference over Twitter, in which participants could post questions that AQIM then answered in a PDF document (published again via Twitter) one week later (Prucha and Fisher 2013).
Terrorists may also use Twitter for practical communication. When US airstrikes against Syria seemed imminent in August 2013, several jihadi and Hezbollah-related groups in Syria used Twitter’s real-time function to exchange urgent communication in order to prepare for attacks that they thought would be aimed at them. Some experts also consider it realistic that Twitter could be used to carry out actual attacks. In fact, in 2008 alone, an intelligence report released by the US Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion included a chapter entitled “Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter,” which expressed the army’s concern over the use of the blogging services (304th MI BN OSINT Team 2008). The report says that Twitter could become an effective coordination tool for terrorists trying to launch militant attacks. It also highlights three possible scenarios of terrorist usage of this online format. In the first scenario, terrorists would send and receive near-real-time updates on the logistics of troops’ movements in order to conduct more successful ambushes. In the second scenario, an operative with an explosive device or suicide belt would use a mobile phone to send images of his or her location to a second operative, who would use the near-actual-time imagery to time the precise moment to detonate the explosive device. In the third scenario, a cyberterrorist operative finds a soldier’s online social media account, and is able to hack into his account and communicate with other soldiers using the stolen identity (304th MI BN OSINT Team 2008, 9). These scenarios illustrate the varied potential uses of Twitter to improve the accuracy and deadliness of terrorist attacks.
As terrorists increasingly have embraced social media, Twitter has faced criticism for hosting terror feeds. For instance, in February 2013 the British House of Commons summoned executives from major new media companies such as Twitter and Facebook to question them about how they plan to address this problem. Like most social media companies, Twitter has legal codes that prohibit violent and hate contents. According to Twitter’s terms of use, users are prohibited from publishing or posting “direct, specific threats of violence against others.” On the one hand, Twitter maintains a rigorous free-speech approach and repeatedly has refused to delete anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic, or other offending contents. For quite a while, it continued to tolerate al-Manar, Hezbollah’s media wing, as a user.
3 On the other hand, Twitter has shut down numerous accounts that violated its terms of use; however, this approach has not always proved effective. When the Syrian Al-Nusra Front’s Twitter account was suspended, it opened up an alternative account on August 25, 2013—which gained more than 20,000 followers within one day! This example illustrates how fast terrorists can restore the status quo ante online.
Besides the risk of shutdown, popular Twitter accounts may become a double-edged sword for terrorists. In 2013, Hezbollah’s official account, on which the organization posted an average of more than 200 tweets a day, was hacked and suddenly tweeted “news” in favor of the Syrian rebels, such as “Sheikh Naim Qassem made a visit to Al-Qusayr city to raise the morale of the resistance’s brave soldiers” (quoted in Stalinsky 2013a). Another example of a rather creative countermeasure is the “Twitter War” waged between the Taliban and the media department of the international coalition troops in Afghanistan (ISAF). After following the accounts of two Taliban spokesmen for intelligence reasons, in September 2011 coalition soldiers decided to directly post counternarratives to the propaganda. For instance, when @ABalkhi (Abdulqahar Balkhi, a Taliban spokesperson) tweeted that “@isafmedia continue genocide of Afghans: ISAF terrorists beat defenseless man to death,” ISAF replied: “Sorry @ABalkhi: looting and beating innocents are NOT part of ISAF practices during routine searches” (Londono 2011). Since neither side can provide real evidence for their respective claims via Twitter, it is questionable whether this dialogue has any favorable impact on the audience. But according to the ISAF spokespersons, the Taliban have since refrained from tweeting overly exaggerated propaganda claims.
YouTube Terrorism
On the password-protected al-Qaeda online forum Al-Faloja, a posting states: “YouTube is among the most important media platforms in supporting the mujahideen, as it is ranked third in the world with more than 70 million daily visitors.”
4 YouTube was established in February 2005 as an online repository facilitating the sharing of video content. YouTube claims to be the “the world’s most popular online video community.” According to YouTube, on average, more than one billion users watch about six billions hours of videos every month, and 100 new hours are uploaded every minute. Overall, YouTube passed 1 trillion watched videos in 2011; statistically speaking, that means 140 views for every human being on the planet. YouTube is localized in 56 countries and featured in 61 languages, and 70 percent of YouTube traffic comes from outside the United States (YouTube 2014).
The gigantic video sharing website has become a significant platform for jihadist groups and supporters, fostering a thriving subculture of jihadists who use YouTube to communicate, share propaganda, and recruit new individuals to the jihadist cause. As Rita Katz and Josh Devon (2014) revealed:
Easily accessible from almost anywhere in the world, YouTube’s massive global audience ensures that jihadists can simultaneously target both potential recruits as well as those whom the movement intends to terrorize. Furthermore, rather than having to wait for an extended period of time to download videos from jihadist forums, users on YouTube can watch virtually instantaneously.… As important as the videos hosted on YouTube, though, is the website’s facilitation of social networking among jihadists. Comments left on videos and user channels, as well as the capability to send private messages to other users, helps jihadists identify each other rapidly, resulting in a vibrant jihadist subculture on YouTube. This community is comprised of many of the same individuals active on jihadist forums, who create their own video channels of jihadist propaganda designed to cultivate an atmosphere that radicalizes others.
Terrorist groups realized the potential of this easily accessed platform for disseminating propaganda and radicalization videos. Terrorists themselves praised the usefulness of this new online apparatus: “A lot of the funding that the brothers are getting is coming because of the videos. Imagine how many have gone after seeing the videos. Imagine how many have become shahid [martyrs],” convicted terrorist Younis Tsouli (who went by the user name “Ithabi007” [“Terrorist007”]) testified in his 2007 trial (quoted in Weimann 2010a, 51).
In 2008, jihadists suggested a “YouTube Invasion” to support jihadist media and the administrators of al-Fajr-affiliated forums. This suggestion was posted on the Al-Faloja forum on November 25, 2008. The posting provides a synopsis of the YouTube site and its founding, and notes its use by US president-elect Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, and by others. YouTube is argued to be an alternative to television and a medium that allows for jihadists to reach massive, global audiences. The message even instructs how jihadists should cut mujahideen videos into 10-minute chunks, as per YouTube’s requirements, and upload them sequentially to the site. “I ask you, by Allah, as soon as you read this subject, to start recording on YouTube, and to start cutting and uploading and posting clips on the jihadist, Islamic, and general forums,” said the posting on the jihadist web-site (“Jihadist Forum” 2008). “Shame the Crusaders by publishing videos showing their losses, which they hid for a long time.” The jihadists themselves noted the success of the “YouTube Invasion” in the following statement posted on the Al-Faloja forum in December 2008:
After the great success accomplished by the YouTube Invasion and the media uproar it caused that terrorists are getting trained to use YouTube, we have to clarify some matters about the YouTube Invasion. It is a continuous and successive invasion of YouTube. It does not have a time frame or that it will be over after a while. No, it is ongoing and flowing. Brothers, you have to study YouTube in a detailed manner, because it will be one of the pillars of jihadist media. It will be a permanent tool, Allah willing, to reveal the Crusaders and their helpers. Strive to discover new tools and means.…
Among the more widely known jihadist distributors on YouTube is Colleen LaRose, known as “Jihad Jane,” who in March 2009 was charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. LaRose maintained several YouTube channels replete with jihadist content. According to her indictment, LaRose posted on YouTube that she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” the plight of Muslims. Even more influential was Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric killed in Yemen in 2011, whose 700 YouTube videos have been watched more than 3.5 million times. Because of the popularity of his blog, Facebook page, online magazine
Inspire, and hundreds of YouTube videos, the Saudi news station Al Arabiya has described al-Awlaki as the “bin Laden of the Internet” (quoted in Morris 2010). A 2009 British government analysis of YouTube found 1,910 videos of al-Awlaki, one of which had been viewed 164,420 times (Gardham 2010). In one example of al-Awlaki’s effect through YouTube, his online videos inspired Roshonara Choudhry, a Muslim student jailed for attempting to murder British member of Parliament Stephen Timms in May 2010. Choudhry claimed that she was radicalized after being directed inadvertently by YouTube to a stream of al-Awlaki’s videos (Dodd 2010). Despite his death and the demands to remove his videos, as of January 1, 2014, a simple keyword search for “Al Awlaki lectures” brought up more than 300 YouTube video clips. In one Arabic-language YouTube video, for example, al-Awlaki told viewers: “Don’t consult with anybody in killing the Americans, fighting the devil doesn’t require consultation or prayers seeking divine guidance. They are the party of the devils.”
In recent years, terrorist clips—many of which correlate to major terrorist events around the world—have proliferated on YouTube. The following are some notable examples:
• Following the March 29, 2010, Moscow subway bombing carried out by two Chechen women, Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the attack in a video posted directly on YouTube. The video was announced on the website of the Kavkaz Center, a privately run portal associated with Chechen jihadist movement.
• On April 30, 2010, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan group created its official YouTube page. One day later, on May 1, the group posted its first video on that page—a video that claimed responsibility for that day’s attempted car bombing attack in New York City’s Times Square.
• During 2012, numerous YouTube pages posted installments from a series of detailed video lessons produced by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The series was titled
Waa’iddu (“And Prepare”), a Hamas slogan taken from a Qur’anic verse (8:60) that instructs Muslims to prepare for battle with the enemy. Most of these videos were about half an hour long, and discussed techniques for making bombs and using various weapons.
Some terrorist groups have even launched their own YouTube or self-controlled versions of it. In 2008, Hamas launched AqsaTube, its own video-sharing website, and described it as “the first Palestinian website specializing in Islamic and jihad audio-visual productions.” In addition to choosing a similar name, the logo was designed to look just like YouTube’s logo and page design. AqsaTube featured content ranging from relatively conservative Syrian social drama to videos glorifying al-Qaeda, the latter including commemoration of shaheeds (martyrs), songs, and the glorification of operatives from the military Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Once certain Internet providers refused to host the website, Hamas launched newer versions, named PaluTube and TubeZik. The Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist group Tamil Tigers has also launched TamilTube. In addition to providing alternatives to YouTube, terrorists have taught methods to bypass YouTube’s context restrictions and regulations. In a series of postings starting on April 19, 2011, members of the password-protected English-language Ansar al-Mujahideen forum shared strategies for evading YouTube censorship of materials promoting jihad. These postings suggested various techniques for rendering jihadist content less conspicuous to YouTube administrators and individuals who search for jihadist content for flagging, and also gave strategies to make it easier to create new accounts and to minimize the loss of contacts and information after accounts are removed (SITE Monitoring Service 2011b).
A study conducted by Maura Conway and Lisa McInerney (2008) analyzed the online supporters of jihad-promoting video content on YouTube, focusing on those posting and commenting upon martyr-promoting material from Iraq. The findings suggest that a majority are under 35 years of age and reside outside the Middle East and North Africa region, with the largest percentage of supporters located in the United States. As the researchers concluded, “What is clearly evident, however, is that jihadist content is spreading far beyond traditional jihadist websites or even dedicated forums to embrace, in particular, video sharing and social networking—both hallmarks of Web 2.0—and thus extending their reach far beyond what may be conceived as their core support base in the Middle East and North Africa region to Diaspora populations, converts, and political sympathizers” (Conway and McInerney 2008, 11).
Similar to the other leading social media, YouTube forbids any content that would be regarded as an incitement to violence. YouTube has also responded to numerous government requests to remove videos of radical groups. Despite these efforts, many videos remain available, and even more terrorist propaganda is constantly being posted. As terrorists pepper You-Tube with a constant stream of new videos, it is difficult for YouTube to “flag” and delete objectionable content.
5 Often, it will take months for an offensive video to be removed from the site. It is also common for any visitors that flag offensive content to be bombarded with abusive and violent responses from jihadist supporters. YouTube’s terms of service states that videos “inciting others to commit violent acts” can be flagged, and viewers should notify YouTube of such content. However, an experiment conducted in 2013 revealed that the effectiveness of the flagging system is questionable: Out of 125 videos flagged, 57 (45.4%) were still online more than four months later (Stalinsky and Zweig 2013). Finally, if speech “which attacks or demeans a group” is barred according to YouTube guidelines, why does a YouTube search of “kill the infidels” yield 1,052 hits?
In conclusion, the Internet has proved to be a useful instrument for modern terrorists who use it for a wide range of purposes, from data mining and online fund-raising to incitement, recruitment, and propaganda. However, in this new virtual battlefield, terrorists have needed to renovate, change, and update their online presence. Because counterterrorism agencies have shut down major terrorist websites and forums (and many such websites are now disrupted daily, with users experiencing increasing difficulties in posting material on these websites), the new terrorists turn to newer online platforms. There is a clear trend of terrorist “emigration” to online social media including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Moreover, this trend is expanding to the newest online platforms, such as Instagram, Flickr, and others. For “newcomers,” converts, followers, or sympathizers of jihadi or other terrorist movements, the threshold to access this illegal (or at least illegitimate) content on mainstream new media pages is much lower than to sign up for the closed hardcore forums. Rephrasing von Clausewitz’s classic expression, the new media should be regarded as “an increasing continuation of war by other means.” The new arena of cyberspace, with its numerous online platforms, presents new challenges and requires dramatic shifts in strategic thinking regarding national security and counterterrorism. The strategic thinking should, for example, plan for the future: Since terrorists are so skilled and successful in adapting new communication technologies, counterterrorist approaches should consider future developments, emerging new platforms, and ways to anticipate and preempt terrorist abuse of these tools.