|
How ISIS is winning the online war for Iraq
As the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) claimed control of Iraq's biggest oil refinery and a key border crossing between Iraq and Jordan–it lost a key propaganda weapon: its powerful smartphone app. However, ISIS won't consider it a major setback, as it has an extensive and sophisticated online presence. New Scientist investigates the tools at its disposal.What kind of app did ISIS have? ISIS had written its own Android app, called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, to enable it to spread information via social media. The app allowed users to make their Twitter accounts available to ISIS, so that the organisation could use them to send tweets. On 19 June, Google removed the app from its Android store "for breaching its community guidelines" against violent content. When ISIS took Mosul earlier this month, the app fired out 40,000 tweets in a day, and their gory threats and images may have gone some way to inducing the surrender of the Iraqi army. But ISIS is sophisticated in its use of propaganda. It also puts out benevolent images of its supporters delivering food supplies, for example. What else is ISIS doing online? ISIS seems to be aware of a key aspect of the power of social media: that it is a conversation. Platforms such as Ask.fm, on which users can post questions and give answers anonymously, enable people to have direct conversations with ISIS fighters. "Terror group communications used to be unidirectional - for instance al-Qaeda publishing its magazine. Twitter and Ask.fm now allow people to have a conversation with, say, an ISIS fighter. And that two-way interaction humanises these guys," says Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London. "A 19-year-old from Bradford finds a 19-year-old from Leeds in Syria and they find they have a lot in common, making it all a bit more real." Posted by: 3dc 2014-07-01 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=394570 |