Trolling New Media: Violent Extremist Groups Recruiting Through Social Media - Propaganda, Websites, Blogs, Mobile Phones, Online Gaming, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Muslim Terrorism, Counterterrorism

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. With the advent and subsequent growth of several new media technologies, violent extremist groups have incorporated social media into recruiting strategies. How are violent extremist groups using social media for recruiting? This study explores several new media technologies—websites, blogs, social media, mobile phones, and online gaming—to determine if violent extremist groups rely on social media for recruiting. By comparing the communication of al Qaeda and ISIS, this study concludes that violent extremist groups rely on social media, and they employ a wide range of new media technologies to attract and recruit new members. In some instances, virtual interaction still requires face-to-face communication to adequately recruit someone into a violent extremist group.

This study consists of four chapters. Chapter I includes the research question, the topic significance and relevance, the literature review, and potential explanations and hypostudy. Chapter II details how violent extremist groups utilize websites, blogs, social media, mobile devices, and online gaming when developing and distributing recruiting propaganda. Chapter III identifies how al Qaeda and ISIS have incorporated new media technologies into their communication structures. Additionally, this chapter compares and contrasts how each group uses social media to broadcast or narrowcast their recruiting messages and propaganda. Chapter IV reviews the proposed hypostudy and compares it to findings from Chapters II and III. This chapter also discusses counterterrorism efforts that can potentially corral violent extremist groups' uses of new media and social media. Finally, Chapter IV offers potential areas for future study that can further enhance the limited empirical data surrounding violent extremist groups employing social media to recruit new members.

Violent extremist groups have incorporated new media technologies and social media into recruiting strategies and propaganda. This study attempts to relay how violent extremist groups rely on social media to widely distribute propaganda and recruit new members. Within this study, several examples illustrate how violent extremist groups organize their communication structures to accommodate various new media technologies and social media in particular. By incorporating social media into communication structures and strategies, violent extremist groups project large online presences and propagate messages directed toward specific audiences to attract new members. Several propaganda examples also illustrate how violent extremist groups rely heavily on social media to recruit new members.