Essay Sample on Case Study: Social Media

Terrorism is not a new occurrence to the world; however, the modern times of terrorism have commenced at the twenty-first century. Away from the physical battleground, terrorists are mainly maximizing on creating virtual organizations in the cyber world to spread their ideas and threats across the globe. Terrorist organizations are increasingly using social media platforms to communicate, recruit, and participate in trading activities with fellow terrorist groups. Consequently, this enables terror groups to be more organized and a significant threat by taking away the world’s security and peace (Al-Danani et al., 2020). In recent years, the increase in terror attacks is an alarming warning omen of future immense threats of terrorism. Examples of such groups using social media as a forum for organizing terror attacks include; Al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab ISI, and Jabhat al Nusra.

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The widely used social media platforms are Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. These different platforms of social media aid terrorists create volume and diversity of availability in the world. Since an American computer expert called Edward Snowden’s monitoring program revealed the different Internet forums and messaging forms, it has also widened new borders across the globe regarding rapid communication with people around the world, and it can work even in groups. Terrorists use social media because there is a lot of privacy on these platforms, which used closed groups or even private texting. Hence, terrorists can keep in touch without any interference (Al-Danani et al., 2020). Additionally, social networks provide various services regarding language and linguistic, which makes terrorists communicate with many conveniences. Moreover, social media forums are easy-to-use to convey messages and also provide training manuals to new users who are not familiar with the applications.

Simon Wiesenthal Centre reported in 2014 that there are more than 30,000 social media accounts, websites, and other platforms that are encouraging terrorism in the world, especially in the United States (Anwar, 2020). The report indicated that the fundamental purpose of the terrorists using social media is to recruit more followers and also plan massive attacks. The extremists more frequently seem to create a strong rapport with new users who even succeed as a public-facing channel to their platforms. It is also remarkable that many right-wing groups in social media redirect users towards their platforms. Several terrorists share their perceptions and propaganda on social media. Also, the terrorist claims responsibility through social media when an attack occurs. They hence use social media forums to voice their opinions and stands.

Endeavors have been made by various nations and also agencies to prevent the use of social media by terrorists and those who spread hate messages. Yet, terrorists still take advantage of social media to record videos and also send audios to each other. Monitoring terrorism and hateful message in social media are always tricky since even the most advanced technologies may fail to monitor such content.

However, some methods may be embraced that would useful in monitoring and curbing the use of social media by terrorists. They include; creating shared databases of the hateful message. By creating a shared database of the offensive message, it will ensure that the message is automatically removed and hence banned from the other users (Al-Danani et al., 2020). The different social media platforms need to keep crosschecking the content shared and also moderate the type of message shares; this can be achieved through developing advanced technologies that integrate human probes with machine learning. Removing of insightful content should be regarded as an industry-wide attempt and not as a tedious task each platform encounters individually (Anwar, 2020). Therefore, technological tools need to be adjusted to be highly sensitive to hateful content that would result in terrorism. When the hateful material is detected, the designers need to ensure that the content is not uploaded or shared with the other individuals.

The designers of the platforms should make it easy to take down any hateful content from the social media platforms. Users can identify any vicious message that gets into large platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The content is then sent for assessment by a content moderator. The content moderators can then remover the content when already uploaded. This would help minimize the sharing of hateful information, which is usually a tactic used by terrorists. Additionally, the content moderators can as well limit the number of times the insightful message can be shared within site.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should always be on the frontline in investigating hate sites because of the devastating effects of the crimes that result due hate sites. The FBI should work to detect hateful sites and prevent any form of terrorism from happening through public outreach, working closely with the community, and enhancing law enforcement training. Besides investigating such sites, this agency should arrest the culprits involved in sharing such content (Kumar et al., 2020). The FBI should also work closely with the platform moderators who would help in the identification of any hateful material and determine the origin of the content. More training should be done to the FBI officers through operational seminars, and this would equip them better in handling such sites. In as much as it is quite difficult to monitor every step of the terrorists’ communication, each government needs to take responsibility and work together with the security agencies to ensure terrorism does not continue taking the peace of the world.

References

Al-Danani, A. M., & Amor, R. B. (2020). USING SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES TO PROMOTE TERRORISM ISSUES STUDY OF SITE USERS. International Journal of Research-GRANTHAALAYAH, 8(5), 55-77. https://www.granthaalayahpublication.org/journals/index.php/granthaalayah/article/view/IJRG20_B05_3328

Anwar, T. (2020). Unfolding the Past, Proving the Present: Social Media Evidence in Terrorism Finance Court Cases. International Political Sociology. https://academic.oup.com/ips/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ips/olaa006/5810711

Kumar, C. R., & Prasad, B. (2020). Digital Transformation of Modern Terrorism-A Technology Jolt. Public Affairs And Governance, 8(1), 100-118. http://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:pag&volume=8&issue=1&article=006