How ISIS is using Citizen Media

With the creation of the Internet the hope was that it would bring a unprecedented wave of freedom. An even more interconnected world, would not allow for hate or fear to exist with the never ending surveillance of the Internet.

However in June 2014, the Islamic Militant group called ISIS or ISIL launched a Twitter campaign under #AllEyesonISIS, which they created prior to their conquering on the Iraq city of Mosul in 2014. Rather than a blitzkrieg of individual soldiers it can be described as a potent digital marketing attack. This mass dumping of digital marketing on social media allowed Mosul residents and their army, to perceive the looming capture and demise of their city as undeniable. Rather than the Mosul soldiers having confidents in their numbers, the army fled the the city even though they out numbered the radical Islamic group 15 to 1. This victory raised the prestige of the terrorist group within the middle east and throughout the globe. However, ISIS was not done using social media to promote it's radical message, now expanding its extremist war far from it's physical boundaries, with use of Twitter, Facebook and citizen media.

While longterm, ISIS has created and populated the Twitter digital sphere to encourage young people to support the organization and provide the perception that this radical Islamic movement has similar characteristics to a "grassroots" movement. ISIS populates the social media sphere with sophisticated and quality produced videos in order to attract citizens from Canada, United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Therefore, this use of social media "has proven to be an extremely valuable tool for the terrorist organization and perfectly suited for the very audience it's intending to target...[with] 89% of adults aged 18-29 use social media...platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and even Youtube" (Blacker, 1).

ISIS' propaganda machine has continuously produced Hollywood esque movies, that imitate actions films, which are obvious ploys to attract young Westerner viewers. The videos are usually in the moment footage accumulated together and translated into multiple European languages as well as English. These videos, on social media, are medieval but they have had a stunning affect on successfully recruiting young individuals in these western nations to convert to Islam and to run away and join the the jihadist group. Individuals including: Aqsa Mahmood (Scotland) and Shannon Conley (United States) (Blacker, 5).

ISIS' use of citizen media to spread their radical messages have proven that though the Internet is a great avenue to promote peace, it can also be used promote: hate, distrust, and terrorism. However, it is interesting to see that ISIS has used citizen media as one of their major pillars for their movement, and realizing that these outlets enable citizens in the western world to engage with radical Islamic thought, which are messages highly criticized by the western countries (Warner, 2002).