By Anne Speckhard “If I was going to die at least I could die helping children. [It’s] illogical that you are entering a war zone that you don’t know anything about … I felt if I did something good it would overwrite the bad that had happened.” — Canadian 46-year-old Kimberly Pullman, speaking about her decision…
ISIS Media
By Moign Khawaja It has been almost two years since the Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, lost its final stronghold in eastern Syria and four months since its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi was killed in a US military raid. Have these two game-changing events led to the demise of the group…
Deplatforming terrorists from messaging apps may damage existing networks, but those who remain often double down in their beliefs. By Amarnath Amarasingam Earlier this week, a fellow terrorism researcher and friend sent me a text which stated: “TamTam is amazing. I missed all the early ISIS stuff on Telegram. Now I feel like I was…
Summary of Tech Against Terrorism’s analysis: Analysis of more than 45,000 URLs since 2014 across more than 330 platforms shows that smaller platforms are heavily targeted by ISIS and that 49% of all URLs were found on just eight of these platforms. Key conclusions: ISIS experimentation with small social media platform Koonekti is the most…
This Blog post is a lightly edited version of a report prepared by the EU Internet Referral Unit in Europol and circulated to law enforcement agencies and member states in October 2018. It is appearing here publicly for the first time, at the request of Europol. [Ed.] Key Takeaways Non-violent material is integral to terrorists’ propaganda…
By Nathan Shea The first news that militants had taken to the streets of the Islamic City of Marawi on May 23, 2017, came from Facebook. Pictures of masked men carrying assault rifles and waving the black flag of the Islamic State were swirling across social media well before Philippine and international news channels picked…
By Anne Speckhard and Ardian Shajkovci With the collapse of the so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq, and much of Syria, an immediate corresponding and steady decline occurred in ISIS’ strategic communication and online propaganda activities. However, the group’s “virtual Caliphate” is rebounding and still remains very much alive today – it continues to create new content,…
By Laurence Bindner and Raphael Gluck On April 27 2018, a Europol press release announced that new action was underway to disrupt ISIS’[1] ability to spread its propaganda online. The press release referred to an operation that commenced two days earlier, which was led by the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office and coordinated with six European countries…
By Carol Winkler One of the attendees at the recent Ethics of Terrorism Research workshop held at Swansea University poignantly observed, “ethics is method, method is ethics.” This rich concept has various implications for how terrorism researchers should think about their work. To start such a conversation, I will revisit Simon Cottee and Jack Cunliffe’s…
VOX-Pol has released its latest report in the VOX-Pol publication series, titled A Tale Of Two Caliphates: Comparing the Islamic State’s Internal and External Messaging Priorities, co-authored by Dr. Dounia Mahlouly and Charlie Winter. About the Report In recent years, the media department of the self-proclaimed Islamic State has proven itself to be highly adept at…
