Bringing the Fight to #Cyberspace: Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Media in Building Social Capital for Extremist Organizations
Abstract
Through the advent of increasingly direct forms of social media, technological advancements have contributed to the creation of varying social media platforms—platforms often exploited by extremist organizations striving to have their messages heard.
This research examines how members of Islamic, Christian and white supremacist extremist organizations use Twitter to build social capital. By analyzing the presence of these groups on Twitter, this study determines whether the number of recruits gained from social media have decreased by examining the effectiveness of existing counter-terror methods.
Findings indicate that ISIS successfully used this medium to bolster social capital in the past, but maintaining social capital through social media has since declined. Large-scale watch-groups and counter-terror agency funding have made it harder to find and interact with extremist accounts. Account suspensions have affected ISIS’ reach, thus diminishing their sphere of influence, while supremacist groups haven’t had to face the same level of backlash online. Due to the nature of groups researched, measuring levels of trust members have towards their organizations is operationalized as social media usage and online presence. Furthermore, the dichotomy between how counter-terror agencies and proprietors of social media forums monitor and combat Islamic versus Christian extremist organizations online is analyzed.
Bringing the Fight to #Cyberspace: Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Media in Building Social Capital for Extremist Organizations
Through the advent of increasingly direct forms of social media, technological advancements have contributed to the creation of varying social media platforms—platforms often exploited by extremist organizations striving to have their messages heard.
This research examines how members of Islamic, Christian and white supremacist extremist organizations use Twitter to build social capital. By analyzing the presence of these groups on Twitter, this study determines whether the number of recruits gained from social media have decreased by examining the effectiveness of existing counter-terror methods.
Findings indicate that ISIS successfully used this medium to bolster social capital in the past, but maintaining social capital through social media has since declined. Large-scale watch-groups and counter-terror agency funding have made it harder to find and interact with extremist accounts. Account suspensions have affected ISIS’ reach, thus diminishing their sphere of influence, while supremacist groups haven’t had to face the same level of backlash online. Due to the nature of groups researched, measuring levels of trust members have towards their organizations is operationalized as social media usage and online presence. Furthermore, the dichotomy between how counter-terror agencies and proprietors of social media forums monitor and combat Islamic versus Christian extremist organizations online is analyzed.