Social Media War on ISIS

The US Internal State Department admitted that the ISIS is winning the social media war amidst efforts of the richest and technologically advanced nations in countering the Islamic state. The State Department was planning to combat ISIS' message machine through social media but the group's violent narrative flooding thousands of messages each day couldn't be defeated by the efforts of the US and its allies. Here's a link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/w...nning-message-war-us-concludes.html?ref=world

 

To be honest I don't think that there's a lot the social media sites can do about the problem. The whole concept of social media is that your sharing things with others that are into the same things has you.

Twitter for example might be able to close down certain sites, but more and more will just reappear.

 

The idea of killing news and social media is stupid in my opinion. Sadly if ISIS want to spread their message throught internet in a way that "everybody" (meaning the social meddia architecture) will be listen to they will success in thei intent. As pwarabi also just said, if you're plan to close social media, it would be a useless effort because a thousand social medias like the previous one will be risen up.

 

It looks like the whole world is attacking the US in some form on the internet. It can hacking email and social networking sites. I's so surprised that the US is taking this one so well while being bent over. Can't they get on the offensive and start doing the same to them? If we are doing it, why aren't we hearing about it more? Time to fight fire with fire.

 

The U.S can't always be conceding defeat. A war is never lost until you stop fighting. There's much that can be done to counter ISIS's influence on the net. Work with allies. Ask the social networks to permanently block the IPs of anyone who shares IS propaganda or news. Demand that the media houses ignore ISIS, etc, etc. In time ISIS will fade into obscurity.

 

IS does seem to have sprung up quite rapidly in a short period of time, and when that happens it's usually the case that they'll disappear quite quickly aswell. In this case though I'm not too sure, if you look at how many countries they are based in already, winning this war will be a lot tougher than I think people realise.

 

They have made "mediatic" actions so now everyone know about them. I think that was exactly what they wanted, to call the attention of the world, that's how fanatic people operate.

 

Social media has changed the delivery of the message in fighting over the years. Leaflets dropped by planes in WW I, shortwave radio from WW II until the Internet took hold in the late 1990s, and now we have immediacy.

If you are curious to learn more about IS to see what we're up against, search for "dabiq" using the usual search engines. IS has published 9 issues of a very slick English language publication in PDF format since mid-2014. The first edition was 26 pages; the current edition is 79 pages. As a news junkie that began listening to shortwave broadcasters in 1952, I have always found the different perspectives fascinating. The fighting in the cradle of civilization has been going on since man walked out of the rift valley, only the tools of fighting have changed over the eons, and there is no end in sight.

I used to follow some of Anon accounts appearing on Twitter, but the drivel got boring and I dropped them. If a news event pops up, I find it is easier to do a Twitter hash tag search and optionally follow selected accounts for a while.

 

I still can't quite understand how ISIS has ever convinced the people they have influenced through social media. How are they even convincing people to join them through their promises which are obviously just pure propaganda? I have read in another thread that they have been luring women to join them with the promise of good life when they can't obviously give that to those poor women.

 

Isis are grooming people the way a sex offender would basically. They're luring them in with charm and a bit of humour and sophisticated debate. Then they'll be saying how easy it is to join an promising them alsorts of things.

It's no surprise that a lot of the people going over there to fight are pretty young, they're the most vulnerable and they'll be the ones most likely to fall for it.