Social Media is Stronger than the Bullet?

Check this article out about social media tools like Twitter may be helping terrorists a lot. The new age of terrorism is digital.

SOCIAL TERRORISM

Could Africa’s Youth be under Attack? The latest 2015 report issued by We Are Social revealed that there are 85 million active Social Media Users in Africa. Take that figure and cross reference it with the United Nations’ statistic of 20% of the Africans population being aged between 15 and 24 and boom we have 17 million youths using Social Media in Africa. If you could target only 1% of that, you would have 170 000 followers and if equally split out, you would have 3 148 followers in each African country.

3 148 possible terrorist targets of radicalisation, recruitment practices and learners to train.

The likelihood is slim, but there’s no doubt that terrorists are understanding, studying and using social media and like any social media marketer, terrorist radicals are targeting the youth.

Cyber Terrorism expert, Evan Kohlman says, “90% of terrorist activity on the internet takes place using social media tools” and it has clearly become a huge threat in Africa.

Gabriel Weimann, of the Woodrow Wilson Centre, outlines exactly how terrorists are using social media in her article entitled, New Age Terrorism and New Media. “Just like marketers use data insights to attract potential new fans and followers, terrorists can smell blood too and they have clever strategies for attracting, approaching and recruiting. These terrorist Propagators and recruiters are often referred to as electronic jihadists,” she states.

In June 2014, Facebook hit the milestone of having 100 million Africans using Facebook making the platform a likely tool for terrorist activity. Weimann states in her studies that terrorists access Facebook via a proxy, fake personal data and use anonymisation software while browsing.

Twitter, however, is undoubtedly the terrorist’s most preferred social platform, researchers and media agree. According to The Business Insider, ISIS is using hashtags like #CalamityWillBeFallUs and has a Western influencer strategy by directly threatening the likes of Oprah and Jimmy Kimmel to get the reach. Terrorists, like any other social marketer, are trend watchers and are always looking to insert themselves into them. The problem is that we take Twitter as a credible source of news.

Rich Media sites are not exempt with YouTube, for example, being viewed as “an alternative to television and a medium that allows jihadists to reach massive, global audiences,” says Weimann. 8% of South African social media users use Instagram and may stumble across 15 second micro-videos of beheadings, radical content glorifying the likes of Osama Bin Laden, on Instagram and so on.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has clearly stated that Facebook operates in the name of Freedom of Speech, but the question is to what end? Brazil has already introduced the Internet Bill of Rights to balance the freedom of expression and the right to privacy and personal data. But is this effective? Just this year, Ireland has refused to go the route of China and monitor social media conversations and restrict free speech. So we come to a cross roads.

Perhaps the answer lies in taking back our internet, and building our society. As Rebecca Mackinnon, a blogger and co-founder of Global Voices Online, points out, “The reality is that even in democratic societies we do not have good answers for how you balance the need for security and protection of civil liberties and free speech on our digital networks”. She goes on to say that social media needs to evolve in a citizen centric manner, stating that it is how we hold our governments and the government of ‘Facebookistan’ accountable to the public interest. “Each and every one has a vital part to play in building the kind of world in which government and technology serves the world’s people, not the other way around,” she concludes.

Ordinary social media users in Africa now have to take a stand. It has become our responsibility to make governments and social networks to serve us and our right to safety. Terrorism always comes as a big surprise, but standing together in movements like #BringBackOurGirls against Boko Haram in Nigeria, #JeSuisCharlie against al-Qaeda in Paris and #IllRideWithYou against Islamaphobia and ISIS in Sydney is the right social media antidote to terrorism.

Keep it together, stand together, for the tweet is more powerful than the bullet. http://www.nativevml.com/blog-detail/social-terrorism