Since terrorism and extremism are arose now, regarding Ivanka Trump do a speech in Saudi Arabia, when she and his father, the President of USA, Donald Trump about Social Media and counter-Terrorism and Extremism. It is so interesting for me to look for a thesis or article about these things Social Media and Terrorism (include Extremism). And I just got a good thesis from the internet named "TROLLING NEW MEDIA: VIOLENT EXTREMIST GROUPS RECRUITING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA" by Mark D. Chang.
His work is so good with detail explanation about the role of new media that affected by extremism and terrorism. He explained many things about how these extremist and terrorist organizations use new media as a communication media and strategic. Two main organizations which discuss here are ISIS and Al Qaeda.
To remain effective, violent extremist groups must recruit new members continuously. Counterterrorism authors Deborah Browne and Andrew Silke argue that “whoever communicates the most compelling message significantly improves their chances of winning” the battle for hearts and minds of new recruits.
Extremist organizations’ recruiting messages are important, but the method and mode of communication are equally critical. To maintain an advantage over agencies that counter them, violent extremist groups have incorporated social media completely into their recruiting repertoire.
New media allows violent extremist groups to actively connect with and recruit from vast and globally distributed audiences. it illustrates how violent extremist groups have adapted their communication structures to utilize social media networks for distributing propaganda, biased information used to influence beliefs or behavior. Furthermore, this thesis details how violent extremist groups use social media to identify popular topics or collect individual preferences.
In the social media, violent extremist groups use the skewed reality that echo chambers create to portray terrorism as a normal, desirable act. For them, framing is a key component to a successful propaganda strategy. They attempt to frame terrorism as a justifiable act committed by a devout Muslim. By using religious affiliation helps to portray acts of terrorism positively, attracts new media users, and potentially entices them to join the group or commit terrorism in the name of jihad.
There are many advantages by using new media to spread these violent extremist organizations' ideas.
• Easy access
• Little or no regulation, censorship, or other government controls
• Potentially huge audiences spread around the world
• Anonymity of communication
• Fast flow of information
• Inexpensive development and maintenance of a web presence
• Multimedia environment (ability to combine texts, graphics, audio, and video—allows users to download films, songs, books, posters, etc
• Ability to shape coverage in the traditional [old] mass media, which increasingly uses the Internet as a source of stories.
There are some facilities in New Media used by these violent extremist organizations, for instances social media, blog, website, video sharing, and even the game online. Social media is using for spreading their narrowcast propaganda to attract their audiences who have the same interests and preferences, especially in religious stuff.
Blogs, social media, or mobile devices allow violent extremist groups to quickly communicate and widely distribute recruiting propaganda globally. Violent extremists can share seemingly benign posts or links to harmless sounding videos throughout social media networks.
For game online, these extremist groups made their initial video game— Ummah Defense—was an online hit, al Qaeda produced and released Ummah Defense II. Al Qaeda continues to advertise their online games, and both games remain available for free download on the Internet.
Several violent extremist groups have developed games to interact with these large online communities. In the anti-Israeli game entitled Under Ash. Another game, The Resistance, sets players as the Islamic resistance in South Lebanon. Rebecca Armstrong from The Independent relays that the resistance defends homelands against the “invading Zionists.”
Violent extremist groups’ ability to broadcast and narrowcast recruiting propaganda depends upon social media users’ comments on videos, television shows, or other types of media. Violent extremist groups rely on social media to recruit new members. After the hypothesis is reviewed, counterterrorism recommendations are offered that can potentially degrade the effectiveness of violent extremist groups’ online recruiting strategies. The final area of this chapter offers future areas of study that would likely increase the limited amount of empirical data that explains the effectiveness of violent extremist groups’ new media recruiting strategies.
Maybe that's all. Anyway, this writing is much here is copying from Thesis "TROLLING NEW MEDIA: VIOLENT EXTREMIST GROUPS RECRUITING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA" by Mark D. Chang.
Reference Chang, M. D. (2015). Trolling New Media: Violent Extremist Group Recruiting through Social Media. California: Naval Postgraduate School
His work is absolutely great. For further and detail writing you can go to this link https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=790313