Crowdsourcing Extremism: Connecting the Minority

by Jesse Yoder

Introduction

Have you ever seen something that you found strange, offensive, or just plain crazy on the internet and wonder who are these people?  Well, crowdsourcing connects communities in a way that is not geographically constrained.  This level of connection allows communities to form around things that are incredibly unpopular relative to a larger population.  This could apply to any unusual hobby, fetish, group, or ideology.  This blog post will focus on the use of social media by violent extremists and the impact that it creates. 

Terrorists and Violent Extremists

There are a lot of different violent and potentially violent organizations around the world.  The majority of violent extremist attacks can be divided into violent jihadist attacks and far right wing attacks.  Far right wing hate groups have been the most lethal within the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (New America, 2016).  The people who have carried out these kinds of terroristic attacks have not always been part of a more organized group.  However, the majority do read violent and inciting content through social media.  Since 11 September 2001, the most lethal far right wing attack was the Charleston church shooting and the most lethal jihadist attack was the San Bernardino health department holiday party shooting.  Both happened in 2015. 

There is also a history of terrorism within the United States (US).  Timothy McVeigh bombed an Oklahoma City government building in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring 600 more (Wikipedia, 2016).  He was angry over the United States government’s raid in Waco, Texas to apprehend cult leader David Koresh.  Eric Rudolph bombed multiple sites between 1996 and 1998, including the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.  He killed three people and injured hundreds in the name of the “Army of God,” a Christian organization that encourages violence to deter gay rights and the pre-choice movement (Wikipedia, 2016).  Violent jihadist terrorism is responsible for the terror attacks of 9/11 and has claimed thousands of lives.

Daesh and Social Media

Despite the broad scope of terrorism, the subject of most of this blog post will be Daesh, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or sometimes shortened to just the Islamic State (IS).  The concepts found in this blog post apply to other violent extremists but Daesh makes a fitting example because of their current worldwide relevance and sophisticated use of crowdsourcing through social media.  Most of the world’s citizens are repulsed by calls to kill and maim and Daesh propaganda is typically gruesomely violent.  Dr. Fawaz A. Gerges said this when describing Daesh’s actions (Zakaria, 2015),

“Action speak louder than words. It is. It's savagery and viciousness -- all of us here, we look at horrible evil. Of course, it's evil. And this is part of its strategy to convinced young men and women who are on the fringed, who are deluded, who have no purpose in life, who suffer from torn identities come to us” (Zakaria, 2015).

                How are so many enticed by this call to brutality?  Daesh casts a wide net with their social media campaign.  They employ tactics such as hashtag hijacking to reach a broader audience.  Hashtag hijacking is located popular existing hashtags on twitter and dominating the tag with excessive output (Booking, 2016).  The group is able reach and network individuals over an enormous geographical area who have uncommon tendencies toward violence and whom feel disenfranchised by their local cultures, offering them revenge, belonging, and friendship.  Journalist, Thomas Friedman, describes the trend like this (Zakaria, 2015),

“20 years ago, you can never find the three people in Minnesota who would be attracted to the ISIS ideology. Today you can and they find you. ISIS has used Facebook, Twitter, Google and the worldwide web as its command and control system” (Zakaria, 2015).

                Daesh militants use social media to reassure their audience and intimidate their adversaries.  They coordinate their operations and governance over social media.  Critical to the survival of their organization, they recruit.  These militants spend resourcing recruiting across the globe, engaging potential supporters with sympathetic messages sent through secure messaging services.  They even occasionally ship gifts to recruits, such as an airline ticket.  Sometimes, they encourage the recruits to launch terror attacks at home (Booking, 2016).

                The tweet below is just one of many that are meant to garner attention, answer questions, and make the violent state seem normal.

(Klausen, 2015)

                Violent Jihadist groups have understood the growing significance of the media domain for years.  Infamous terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, wrote to the leader of the Taliban in 2002 saying,

“It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach 90 percent of the total preparation for the battles” (Klausen, 2015).

                Tweets made from selected Daesh accounts around March 2014 are broken down by subject in the table below.  Tweets from any subject group may directly call for and incite violence but the table shows the spectrum of use (Klausen, 2015). 

(Klausen, 2015)

                Combatting extremism is a multifaceted effort that requires a complex and comprehensive understanding of relevant history and real-time realities.  A qualified individual could write an entire book on counter-terrorism techniques regarding a single extremist organization.  Regardless of the organization, a part of that effort must be counteracting the extremist group’s narrative and crowdsourcing efforts through social media. 

Sources

Booking, Emerson;  Singer, P.W.  (March 2016).  The War of Social Media: ISIS Goes Viral – and the World.  Retrieved on 07 April 2016 From http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.kennesaw.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=64dacb3c-5466-48cd-b542-94faa34c7a85%40sessionmgr4003&hid=4103

Klausen, Jytte (2015) Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38:1, 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948 Retrieved on 31 March 2016 From http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948

New America (2016).  Deadly Attacks Since 9/11. Retrieved on 08 April 2016 From http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html

Wikipedia (2016). Eric Rudolph.  Retrieved on 08 April 2016 From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph

Wikipedia (2016). Timothy McVeigh.  Retrieved on 08 April 2016 From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh

Zakaria, Fareed (29 November 2015).  Blindsided: How ISIS Shook the World. Retrieved on 04 April 2016 From http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1511/29/fzgps.01.html