Social media acts as a platform for expression and engagement, whether it be good or bad. People from all over the world possess easy access to its facilities, resulting in substantial levels of social media usage. Youtube provides the content to over 1 million users every month, similarly, Twitter generates an average of 500 million tweets per day. The effect of a constantly thriving social media platform is that it becomes very hard to regulate the content that is produced across these different sites. Therefore, the introduction and encouragement of extremist ideas become much simpler than anticipated. Information or content uploaded to sites, such as Twitter and Facebook can be immediately shared with thousands of other social media consumers. It is a platform that can provide both success and failure for extremist groups.
Extremist ideas have been present for many years now, for example, the 1930s and 40s, with the presence of the Nazi regime. During that era, propaganda was the primary form of spreading Nazi ideologies across many countries. Many back then also understood that a strong relationship with your audience is key in order to generate successful propaganda. In the present time, propaganda is published via the use of social media. Twitter is a prime platform used by extremist groups to spread propaganda. Christian Fuchs describes Twitter as, “A microblog platform that has become the object of political mythologising.” Content distributed on Twitter is often fake and based on controversial thinking rather than real facts, however, many fail to acknowledge when they are presented with fake news or propaganda. It has suspended nearly 1 million accounts for reinforcing terrorism, in less than 2 years. “Social media is a neutral communications platform that can be used for good or evil purposes, but it has become the weapon of choice for extremist propagandists,” the reason it has become a desired “choice of weapon” is due to the fact that social media, provides extremist indirect access to communicate with a mass variety of people, and directing their messages towards their intended audience. This audience is most commonly youth, in particular impressionable youth.
The minds of young individuals are easily moulded, as they are very open to new ideas and desire new knowledge. Therefore, this is the ideal target audience for extremists, as they are considered vulnerable due to their extensive curiosity. Young social media consumers dabble in “virtual playground for extremists,” exposing themselves to radical ways of thinking. Many young consumers lack a developed knowledge of social media’s algorithms and as a result often fail to distinguish what content is real and what content is fake, making them easy targets for extremist ideologists. Youth lack the ability to act as critical consumers, which would allow them to recognise propaganda and then deconstruct it, preventing them from becoming victims of extremist groups. The paramount group of young people that are targeted is those who are dissatisfied with life, and the way it has panned out. Ahmad Mansour, a leading international expert on radicalisation discussed the idea of there being 3 chief factors that identify this group of young people. This being either; the feeling of “isolation, lack of identity and family hardship.” Young people with this profile are at easy access on social media, as they are often found to use it as a platform for escapism, consequently making social media also the perfect platform for extremist groups to gain more followers. Many believe that tackling the issue of youth and extremism on social media, would include taking into account the participation of youth in political affairs, as it would reinforce their sense of involvement, directing them towards a sense of tolerance and mutual understanding. This was also emphasised by a study on youth and violent radicalisation by UNESCO.
Isis is a well-known extremist group, who has thrived due to the growth of technology, in particular social media. Their activity on social media has enabled them to enlist thousands of new foreign fighters. A key way that Isis engages with social media is through its distribution of vulgar and highly violent Youtube content. This works well with young members of the public who are seeking approval and desire to look ‘cool’ and reassert their authority. Isis has now also triggered an online cyberwar, as they know that this form of influencing the public provides them with the reassurance that, even if they lose physical presence in terms of land, they can root themselves within the social media network and maintain a constant influence on the world. This highlights the idea that social media encourages extremist ideas, although not directly, it provides the right tools for these ideas to spread effortlessly. Isis uses a variety of ways to communicate their ideologies to social media consumers, including; online messages of hate, explicit videos containing extreme acts of violence, as well as, an app, which aims to radicalise and create a new generation of cyber jihadists, the app called ‘The Dawn of Glad Tidings’ has now been removed.
Theresa May, the Prime Minister also displayed signs of concern for the contribution of social media in the spread of extremist ideologies, there is a need to “regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremism and terrorist planning.” Although social media sites are not hard to censor, their censorship is believed to not necessarily prove effective. Extremist promoting profiles, accounts or blogs can be removed, however, that does not prevent the expansion of its ideas, as sharing and copying content that has been distributed on social media, is a matter of seconds. In addition, once an extremist group has been removed from a platform, it takes no more than a few mere steps to create a new profile on which to spread radical ideas. A shocking figure of 27,000 extremist posts has said to been made within the past 5 months, according to the Home Office. This highlights the deep relationship extremist groups maintain with social media. They play an active role on the platform. Censorship alone is not the solution, Wesley Rahn argues that “Social media could contribute to a more positive narrative by publishing stories about individuals who faced social difficulties but didn’t turn to radicalisation,” This would help to reassure vulnerable young consumers that propaganda may be used against them in order to gain their support for extremist ideas.
The world has entered a cyber-war with extremist groups, and steadily we are losing the social media war. Eliminating extremist groups from the cyber world is a difficult aim. Although, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube all have set algorithms, which enable them to detect content involving child abuse or breaching copyright issues, and so on. There is no set phrase or image that can define extremist ideologies or activity on social media. Therefore, detecting such activity becomes hard work. While Twitter has managed to reduce radical and extremist content by 45%, that does not deter further activity on the web, “It’s simply impossible to remove it all. Even if one platform successfully takes something down, usually that content is available somewhere else,” as said by Susan Benesch. This cyberwar can’t be won, through the mere use of content regulators and a set of algorithms. Many argue that in order to succeed in this war, social media consumers must have more advanced knowledge and experience of social media and how to consume its content. Rather than maintaining a generation of passive consumers, we must develop a growing category of active and critical consumers of social media content.
Social media is a flourishing platform, with a mass audience. Out of the estimated population of 7.4 billion people, a large 2.3 billion are active social media users. That is over 31% of the population. This alone automatically makes social media a useful tool for extremist groups due to the potentially high level of viewership they can access. However, some argue that there is no definite evidence or connection between social media and the violent radicalisation of youth or recruitment into extremist groups, such as Isis. A study by UNESCO on youth and violent extremism in social media highlighted the role social media plays in the radicalisation of youth, “Rather than being initiators or causes of violent behaviours, the Internet and social media specifically can be facilitators with wider processes of violent radicalisation.” Although this suggests that social media alone does not automatically create a new generation of cyber extremists, it does, however, promote extremism worldwide, reaching those vulnerable audiences. Therefore, despite there not being a direct link between social media and the radicalisation of its consumers, it is clear that social media is a primary weapon in the cyberwar we are currently fighting.
Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are under threat penalisation through the use of taxes. This has been enforced by the British government as an attempt to further fight online terrorism and extremism. Twitter and Facebook, in particular, have on countless occasions failed to tackle messages of hate or glorification of extremist ideas, they are also commonly used platforms for the distribution and spread of fake news. This is often said to be based on the fact that these social media platforms benefit from the circulation of such content. “If they (internet firms) continue to be less than co-operative, we should look at things like a tax as a way of incentivising them or compensating for their inaction,” as said by Ben Wallace. The constantly rising levels of extremism that is produced on social media platforms are resulting in the introduction of harsher rules and regulations in order to prevent further radicalisation. However, whether or not such measures will prove successful is not a certainty.
To conclude, social media not only exposes extremist ideologies to the rest of the world, it advocates their status. Social media enables extremist groups to create a relationship with their desired audience, allowing them to generate propaganda and content that is considered somewhat relatable to their audience. Despite the fact that studies have shown there is no complete link between social media and radicalisation of the public, social media provides these extremist groups with direct access to billions of consumers, whom of which many do not possess a clear understanding of social media algorithms and often fall victim of fake news or propaganda. On the other hand, they gain ingress to a growing generation of youth that is seeking acceptance on social media, as they feel isolated from the rest of the world, making them perfect targets for terrorism or extremist groups looking to recruit new followers. Another key way through which social media is an advocate for extremist thinking is the fact that there is no clear punishment or consequence for the distribution of such ideologies, therefore, creating an almost safe environment for terrorists and extremists to spread their controversial beliefs without truly being penalised for their wrongdoings. Consequently so, social media has become the primary weapon used against us in this social media cyberwar.
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