Jihadist Propaganda on Social Media

Abstract

This article focuses on ISIS followers on Twitter in an effort to understand the nature of their social media propaganda. The research study provides unique insight into one of the largest data sets that investigates ISIS propaganda efforts on Twitter by examining over 50 million tweets posted by more than 8 million unique users that referenced the keywords “ISIS” or “ISIL.” The authors then searched this corpus for eight keywords in Arabic that included terms of support for ISIS and the names of different Al-Qaeda leaders. A mixed research method was used, and the findings indicate that ISIS activity on Twitter witnessed a gradual decline, but the group was still able to post different types of tweets to maintain its online presence. Also, the feud between ISIS and Al-Qaeda was intense, ongoing, and prevalent in online interactions among ISIS followers. The study provides an understanding of using big data to better grasp the propaganda activities of terrorist groups.