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eureka
Publications
ISBN: 978-81-935639-3-9
NEW MEDIA: NEW F
RONTIERS
OF COMMUNICATION
Dedicated to:
Bau & Shlok
By:
Keshav Patel
Eureka
Publications
RONTIERS
Publications
CONTENTS
Sr. No.
Chapter
Page No.
01. The Networked Audience and Viral News
Anubhav Mathur, Dr. Devesh Kishore 1-11
02. New Media and Power-Shift: An Overview
Dr. Ramaa Golwalkar 12-34
03. Websites: A Medium of Promotion for
Educational Institutions
Dr. Ramesh Kumar Rawat 35-43
04. New Media, Culture and Society
Dr. Dharmesh Vinayak Dhawankar 44-55
05. New Media And Its Effect on Education
Dr. P. K. Pandia 56-69
06. Future of Media
Dr. Satish Bendigiri 70-73
07. New Media in New India: Social Networking
Sites and the Youth
Dr. Rajesh Kumar 74-87
08. New Media: Citizen Journalism
Dr. Shipra Dua Piplani 88-100
09. Communication and Elected Representatives of
Panchayati Raj: A Theoretical Aspect
Sandeep Sharma, Surender Paul 101-110
10. New Media and Gatekeeping
Ms. Upasana Khurana 111-121
11. New Media Technology
Apoorva Malhotra Buttan 122-130
12. Scope of New Media in the Empowerment of
Women: A Case Study of Burdwan District
of West Bengal
Debarati Dhar 131-138
13. The Changing Phase of Communication:
How Terrorists are using Social Media for
their Propaganda
Manasa Gowda, Keshav Patel 139-145
14. Analysis of the Role of Mass Media In the Coverage
of Election Campaigns Based on Comical Aspects'
Dr. Ramesh Chandra Pathak 146-152
15. Freedom of Press in A Democratic State
Kush Kalra, Bhanu Tanwar 153-164
16. Whatsup: An Effective Tool for News world
Lokendra Singh 165-171
17. Bibliography 172
© Eureka Publications 2018. All Rights Reserved.
13
THE CHANGING PHASE OF COMMUNICATION:
HOW TERRORISTS ARE USING SOCIAL MEDIA
FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA
*
Assistant Professor Department of Mass Communication and Journalism. St. Claret College.
Bangalore.
**
Research Scholar, MGCGVV Madhya Pradesh.
Correspondence to: Mr. Keshav Patel, Research Scholar, MGCGVV Madhya Pradesh.
E-mail Id: acharya1225@gmail.com
SOCIAL MEDIA: A TOOL TO SEED TERRORISM
The oxforddictionaries.com defines terrorism as: “The unlawful use of
violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of
political aims.” Nearly two centuries back this word was added initially to
the French and the English language from the original Latin word ‘terror’.
The following graph by Google Books shows how its use grew exponentially
in last two decades.
Graph No.1
The terrorism today, has spread its tentacles beyond the physical world and
engaging every available platform, including virtual, to seed the thoughts of
violence and intimidation.
MANASA GOWDA
*
, KESHAV PATEL
**
NEW
MEDIA:
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COMMUNICATION Page 140
Extremists are increasingly using social media to recruit, radicalise and raise
funds. The most recent of terror networks Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (popularly known as the ISIS), whom the Americans address in its
Arabic acronym Daesh, is known as one of the leading practitioners of this
approach.
British intelligence organization Government Communications
Headquarters’ (popularly known as GCHQ) former Head Robert Hannigan
had spoken extensively, about how ISIS terrorists in Syria had “embraced
the web”, explaining how terrorists had used the encryption tools to hide
their identities. These encryption tools initially were exclusively available to
government agencies.
Let us see, how some terrorist organizations have become adept in using
social media tools to convey their messages:
Add some history how the terrorist activities started worldwide including
the Khalistan and Islamic Terror in Kashmir.
ISIS is the most recent one. Which were the other such organization?
Taliban and Al-Quayada, Hamas, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and so on? Where are
the references of all these organizations?
ISIS
ISIS has, in fact, become fluent in the use of YouTube, Twitter, Instagram,
Tumblr, internet memes and other social media. It's posting activity has
been ramped up during a recent offensive, reaching an all-time high of
almost 40,000 tweets in one day when its members marched into the
northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Twitter tried to counter ISIS, suspending more than 1,000 accounts it
suspected of terrorist links. Amateur videos and images are uploaded daily
by its foot soldiers, which are then globally shared both by ordinary users
and mainstream news organizations. ISIS’ use of hashtags is interesting, as it
focuses them on group messaging and branding concepts.
Social-media monitor Recorded Future found that ISIS had succeeded in
creating hype with a total of 700,000 accounts discussing the terrorist
group.
Mr. Hannigan commented that even the group’s grotesque videos of
beheadings highlight the sophistication of their use of social media. "This
THE CHANGING PHASE OF COMMUNICATION: HOW TERRORISTS ARE
Page 141 USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA
time the 'production values' were high and the videos stopped short of
showing the actual beheading," he said.
AL QAEDA
This group has an Internet presence spanning nearly two decades.
TALIBAN
Taliban has been active on Twitter since May 2011, and has many thousands
of followers. Tweeting under the handle @alemarahweb, the Taliban tweets
frequently, on some days nearly hourly. The Czech Military Intelligence
Service claimed that Al Qaeda are spreading its ideology among the Muslim
community in Europe, mainly through the means of social media.
While Al Qaeda terrorists use the Internet to distribute material
anonymously or 'meet in dark spaces', the ISIS has taken a direct approach
especially when uploading videos of them attacking towns and firing
weapons.
Thus, Hannigan was right in suggesting more co-operation from Twitter,
Facebook, WhatsApp and other online organisations in the fight against
terrorist organisations.
According to Mr. Hannigan the above social media platforms had become
"command-and-control networks for terrorists and criminals. He also
accused the officials of the organisations of being in a "denial mode" and
explained that many terrorist organisations were extensively using social
media platforms for propaganda and spreading their tentacles; especially to
reach vaster audiences across the globe. The social media organisations
harping on the issue of "freedom of expression" seems to have helped the
cause of terrorist organisations in exploiting the social media platforms to
the hilt.
INSIDE AN ISIL TRAINING CAMP IN 60 SECONDS
Up to 500 British jihadists are feared to have traveled to Iraq and Syria and
many of them will have been recruited by the ISIS in a boot camp as seen in
a video.
The images in the video are just the latest in many releases showing Islamic
State training camps. Military tents and weapons including AK-47s and
machine guns can be seen being used by recruits as the group seeks to
promote itself as a military army rather than a terrorist group.
NEW
MEDIA:
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But some of the methods reveal more about the extremists' brutality than
military training, as men are kicked and knee-butted in the chest. Trainers
have scant regard for their recruits and are seen firing live rounds at them.
Meanwhile, lectures from fanatical clerics all form part of the “sickening”
ISIS brainwashing techniques.
Such training centers have been targeted by US air strikes. But the video is
aimed at showing off the Islamic State's training infrastructure despite the
US-led coalition campaign against them.
COUNTER-TERRORISM ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND SOCIAL MEDIA
When representatives from 68 countries gathering in Washington D.C., for
the Meeting of Ministers of the Global Coalition on the Defeat of ISIS hosted
by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the U.S. Department of State,
governments and technology groups upped their efforts to fight terrorism
online.
“We need the global tech industry to develop new advancements in the fight
and we thank those companies which are already responding to this
challenge. We must capitalize on the strong advancements in data analytics
and algorithmic technologies to build tools that discover ISIS’ propaganda
and identify imminent attacks,” he remarked.
Tillerson’s message was strong: ‘A digital Caliphate must not flourish in the
place of a physical one’. “As we have seen from attacks in Nice, Berlin,
Orlando, and San Bernardino, the Internet is ISIS best weapon for turning a
recruit in to a self-radicalised attacker,” he added. Resonating his sentiments
the final statement of the meeting agreed to intensify efforts to curb terrorist
organisations from using social media sites to espouse their cause. Some of
the measures mooted included technical means to facilitate removal of
material which violates terms and conditions for users.
The role of Silicon Valley is key to the success of the campaign against ISIS
and terrorism. In its 10th transparency work and on the 13th anniversary
since the first tweet, Twitter showed that they suspended a total of 636,248
terror-related accounts in the period of August 1, 2015, through December
31, 2016.
During the reporting period included in the latest transparency report-July 1,
2016, through December 31, 2016-a total of 376,890 accounts were
suspended for violations related to promotion of terrorism.
THE CHANGING PHASE OF COMMUNICATION: HOW TERRORISTS ARE
Page 143 USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA
Most of the accounts suspended, about 74 per cent, consisted of accounts
surfaced by Twitter’s own internal, proprietary spam-fighting tools.
The report includes a new section with Government terms of service (TOS)
reports.
“This new section is limited to data about government reports to remove
content in violation of Twitter’s terms of service (TOS) against the promotion
of terrorism,” the company said while stating that government TOS reports
represent less than 2 per cent of all suspensions.
“It also includes an update on the company’s Continued work https://
transparency.twitter.com/en/gov-tos-reports.html to remove terrorist
content from our platform beyond govern ment reports.”
Trolls, fake news, and hate speech have become huge problems for many
online platforms, and in particular for Twitter and Facebook in the wake of
the U.S. election last year with many criticizing the two social media
companies of skewing political discourse by incentivizing the sharing of
misinformation and enabling the propagation of far-right extremist views.
Monika Bickert, is Facebook’s head of counterterrorism efforts and global
product policy. She is also in charge of setting and enforcing the platform’s
community standards and to monitor content produced, shared, and
consumed by its 1.86 billion users. She in her interview on Mar 21, 2017 with
Yahoo! Finance At Facebook, beyond a team of counter-terrorism
researchers and analysts who review content 24/7 days a week, the platform
relies heavily on community policing. One of the global initiatives that
Facebook has been working on-through a joint venture with the US
Department of State and marketing firm EdVenture Partners-is the Peer to
Peer programme, an attempt to crowdsource and aggregate insights from
university students across the world and empower positive voices at a local
level.
“We’re taking these local voices at more than 200 universities around the
world and asking students: ‘What are the issues in your community? Where
is violent extremism coming from? And how can we best counter that?”
Bickert explained.
She added: “Students are the most credible voices and they know the issues
better than anybody. At the same time, the insights are shared among all the
universities…that allow the programme to reach tens of millions of people.”
NEW
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“But we know that even if Facebook could perfectly keep any terrorist
activity from hitting our community and even if every other internet
company or social media platform could do the same, we know that that’s
still not ultimately the solution to countering violent extremism,” she added.
“Instead we need to make sure that we are allowing people to have a
dialogue in a constructive way and help amplify voices from the community
that are pushing back on these violent ideologies.”
TWEETING THE JIHAD: SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS OF WESTERN
FOREIGN FIGHTERS IN SYRIA AND IRAQ
In the light of the above, it is clear that Social Media platforms have played
an essential role in the jihadists’ operational strategy in Syria and Iraq, and
beyond. Twitter, in particular, has been used to drive communications over
other social media platforms. Twitter streams from the insurgency may give
the illusion of authenticity, as a spontaneous activity of a generation
accustomed to using their cell phones for self-publication, but to what
extent is access and content controlled?
The jihadist insurgents in Syria and Iraq use all manner of social media apps
and file-sharing platforms, most prominently Ask.fm, Facebook, Instagram,
WhatsApp, PalTalk, kik, viper, JustPaste.it, and Tumblr. Encryption software
like TOR is used in communications with journalists to obscure locational
information. But circumstances conspire to make Twitter the most popular
application. Specifically engineered for cell phones, it is easy and
inexpensive to use. Posts (tweets) may contain images or text, links to other
platforms can be embedded, and an incoming tweet can effortlessly be
forwarded to everyone in an address list. Some types of social media require
either 3G or wi-fi access but Twitter can be used in the absence of either.
OFFICIAL HANDLES
ISILTWEEP, A1Ghurabaa, and Salafi Jihadi are accounts that appear to be
semi-official mouthpieces for different organisations, all under the ISIL
umbrella. ISILTWEEP is managed by Abu Dujana AlMuhajir, who also uses
the alias @AbuDujanaBritani. Abu Dujana acts as “Dear Abby” for anxious
Westerners who want to join the fight. He is a favourite of journalists and
occasionally engages in online interviews. His pictures suggest he is based in
Raqqa.
THE CHANGING PHASE OF COMMUNICATION: HOW TERRORISTS ARE
Page 145 USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA
Social media is pictorial-images are sent and received containing messages
that are supportive but that often contain deeper meanings or that respond
to fears or aspirations that cannot be openly stated. Out of over 150,000
posts, pictures were used to convey a message in nearly 5,000 posts, and
videos were used in over 5,000 posts.
Images convey information but they are also symbols. The widespread use
of pictures featuring the senders-“selfies”-or showing the dead bodies of the
vanquished enemy tell a different story. The inanity of the pictures from the
Syrian war zone is often jarring. A French kid stands in a store with his gun in
one hand and a jar of his favourite hazelnut spread in the other.
Pictures of hanging out with the bro's over pizza, guns at hand, are common.
Thirteen of the 59 accounts accounted for over half of the media content
posted by the Twitter account holders. (The concentration of pictorial
content may be taken as another indicator of a selective communications
strategy.) The result of the content analysis showed that, for the most part,
the images-videos and photos-corroborated the ideological messaging of
the texts posted. Pictorial content for the most part praised the leaders of
the movement and provided verification of the victories of the jihadists and
the forward march of the movement, while the enemy was denigrated and
dehumanized.
CONTENT IN PICTURES AND VIDEOS
The most graphic pictures send a message of unconstrained power: the
power of the fighters is supreme and the enemy is worthless. Particularly,
Osama bin Laden's old jingle about “we love death more than you love life”
is reformulated for Twitter. Dead jihadistsare often touched up and
presented in softened tones with a half-smile on their face and lovingly
buried. Enemy corpses are gruesomely depicted. Overall, these shockingly
violent pictures comprised only just over 10 per cent of the content. (A
reanalysis after the declaration of the Islamic State in Iraq may produce a
different ratio between lifestyle pictures and images of the vanquished
enemy).
ISBN INR 550