Abstract
ISIS and other international terrorist organizations rely on the Internet to disseminate their extremist rhetoric and to recruit people to their cause, particularly through popular online social media applications. Any meaningful counterterrorism strategy must, therefore, account for the ways in which terrorist organizations use the Internet to prey on young, manipulable minds who are drawn to radical ideas and propaganda and to the desire to serve a cause larger than themselves. This article outlines the ways in which extremist organizations use the Internet to ensnare new recruits, analyzes the implications of cyber-recruitment on existing counterterrorism techniques, and suggests ways in which the U.S. government can work with Internet service providers and other major cyber corporations to better address this growing threat.
The Threat
Violent extremists and terrorist groups have relied on the Internet as a form of communication since the last decade of the twentieth century. Today’s use of the Internet by terrorist organizations is both an extension of prior practice and a new form of outreach. The reliance on the Internet and social media by terrorist organizations as a means of recruitment and messaging has accompanied and abetted the rise of ISIS (also known as ISIL or Islamic State), replacing the more simple communication and broadcasts of al-Qaeda and its associates with an onslaught of videos, calls to action, and ideological recruitment messages, all of which sums up to a social media presence that has become essential to ISIS’s overall strategy of growth and violence.
ISIS’s social media strategy took early form with the Twitter messages that al-Shabaab used for recruitment in Somalia. Seeking fighters for the war in Syria and Iraq, ISIS launched into a highly energized effort of recruitment based on organized propaganda tweets as well as Facebook posts (Berger and Morgan 2015; Berger 2016). Taking this strategy further, ISIS’s recruitment efforts turned to the West, expanding exponentially from Twitter and Facebook to include dozens of platforms on the open web, as well as some on the dark web (Cox 2015). ISIS’s reliance on the Internet has been central to its identity as well as to its recruitment strategy. Speaking to the cyber savvy of this new generation from which it seeks to recruit, ISIS is self-consciously looking to build a cyber Caliphate, at times referred to as a digital Caliphate in support of its land grab in Syria and Iraq (Atwan 2015).
Internally, they refer to themselves as the Islamic State Electronic Army, a group whose efforts are dedicated to social media messaging on one hand and to hacking and security on the other (Stern and Berger 2015, 173). Toward this end, in January 2014, ISIS announced the creation of the Al-Battar Media Battalion, a Twitter-based team designated to push ISIS propaganda and castigate ISIS opponents (Fernandez 2015, 25). Its use of the Internet has given ISIS an “outsized impact,” one that dwarfs the usefulness the Internet had for al-Qaeda (Berger and Morgan 2015, 4). As Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Jim Comey explains, “Your grandfather’s al-Qaeda, if you wanted to get propaganda, you had to go find it… . Now all that’s in your pocket. All that propaganda is in your pocket, and the terrorist is in your pocket. It’s the constant feed, the constant touching, so it’s very, very different and much more effective at radicalizing than your grandfather’s al-Qaeda model” (Comey 2015).
Through social media, ISIS speaks directly to the youth it is targeting for recruitment, using the medium that works best for these youth. The average age of foreign fighter recruits worldwide is 27 (Dodwell, Milton, and Rassler 2016). In the United States, recruits to ISIS are slightly younger. Their familiarity with the Internet and social media is a given. Estimates of the impact of the Internet on recruitment to ISIS in the United States are varied, but experts suggest that it outweighs person-to-person recruitment as an initial driver. This online recruitment has involved a multitude of platforms, ranging from email to the partially encrypted platform KIK (Center on National Security 2016).
Within this multiplicity of platforms, Twitter and Facebook have taken the lead in terms of their popularity among violent jihadist wannabes, not surprisingly given that they are the preferred social media platforms among the teenage and adolescent population generally.
To that end, these messages target the young and vulnerable in the United States—isolated individuals tied to their computers in an echo chamber for which reality and other influences are often kept at bay. The new purveyors of Islamic jihad are particularly adept at tapping into the anxieties and angers of broad swaths of young men and women to exploit what might otherwise be the angst of late adolescence, as well as in fomenting action. The content of the recruitment videos and images shows brutal violence against the infidels and intruders, including beheadings. They share videos that show the West harming Muslims; for example, Abu Ghraib imagery has been plentiful in ISIS propaganda and has been used for broadcasting general calls to join and serve the Caliphate.
The success of ISIS’s messaging is measurable not just in terms of online followers but in terms of actual recruits. Overall foreign fighter recruits are estimated to be between 27,000 and 31,000, and approximately 250 of them are thought to come from the United States (The Soufan Group 2015). In addition, there are recruits to the cause, if not to the fight in Syria and Iraq, in Western countries. Swearing bayah, or allegiance online, has become a regular feature of interactive online communications for those who want to show their commitment to ISIS’s jihad.
Though the number of U.S. recruits pales in comparison to those from countries in Europe and elsewhere, there is a strong and successful movement to entice Americans to join the Islamic State in its violent activities not only abroad, as foreign fighters, but at home. As is true globally, much of the recruitment in the United States is done, in part or in total, via the Internet. Since the spring of 2014, nearly one hundred indictments have been made against alleged ISIS recruits, over half are suspected of attempting to travel abroad—or of helping others—to fight in Syria (Center on National Security 2016). With the Internet built into both the identity and strategy of ISIS’s evolution, online strategies have been created by the U.S. government as well as by foreign governments to counter the appeal of ISIS as part of their overall counter-radicalization efforts (Stern and Berger 2015, 247). Because the West excels in cyberspace, its expertise and familiarity on the cyber battlefield has led to a strong emphasis on online counterterrorism efforts.
The Internet as Countermeasure
Using the Internet as an aid in countering violent extremism (CVE) in general, and ISIS in particular, has taken three main forms: disruption, diversion, and countermessaging.
Disruption
Disruption efforts have relied on a series of technical interventions by Internet companies on behalf of the U.S. government (Waddell 2016). Beginning in 2013, Facebook and YouTube began to aggressively take down propaganda and recruitment sites (Berger 2016). In 2014, Twitter reportedly took down tens of thousands of these accounts. As of 2016, suspensions authorized by Internet companies have continued. Indeed, in August 2016, Twitter announced that it had shut down more than 235,000 accounts linked to ISIS and other extremist organizations (Prigg 2016). Experts and policy-makers have varied opinions about the effects of these suspensions. Some insist that the suspensions are working to limit ISIS’s “ability to grow and spread” (Berger and Morgan 2015). As a Brookings report on Twitter commissioned by Google points out, “Account suspensions do have concrete effects in limiting the reach and scope of ISIS activities on social media… . [T]otal interdiction is not the goal. The qualitative debate is over how suspensions affect the performance of the network and whether a different level of pressure might produce a different result” (Berger and Morgan 2015). Since platforms such as Facebook and Twitter “are global communities, each engaged in a constant process of determining community norms as the use of the platforms evolves,” defining what is and what is not “terrorist content” is precarious work that can expose social media platforms to accusations and censorship and undermine their credibility (Greenberg 2015).
Nevertheless, account suspensions are a critical tool for combatting ISIS online. Put succinctly, one report concludes, “The consequences of neglecting to weed a garden are obvious, even though weeds will always return” (Russon 2015). And in fact, the numbers bear out the impact, at least in the short term. Research has shown, for example, that the suspensions have been effective. “The primary ISIS hashtag—the group’s name in Arabic—went from routinely registering in 40,000 tweets per day or more in around the time suspensions began in September 2014, to [fewer] than 5,000 on a typical day in February. Many of those tweets consisting of hostile messages sent by parties in the Persian Gulf” (Berger and Morgan 2015, 56).
On one hand, the suspensions tend to enhance a game of cat and mouse, of who can outplay the other in terms of avoiding detection. Industry insiders and technologists tell us that such disruptions are often only temporary. When one Twitter account is taken down, a new hashtag—or several new hashtags—can replace it almost immediately. The user just moves to a new account, a new platform, a new place from which to broadcast its message of violence and hatred. While Twitter, to counter this, has banned the proliferation of sites used for the same purpose, ISIS can load bots—automatic, as opposed to human, transmissions into the system—and flood the digital space, enhancing exponentially the number of screens that have a given message. Still, suspended accounts “rarely fully rebounded to their pre-suspension levels, even when the new accounts were left up. Researchers suspect that this could be the case because the suspension discourages returning users, as well as their followers” (Carman 2016).
In addition, some experts anticipate that these shutdowns drive recruiters and their potential followers to the dark web, where the possibility of a counter strategy stands to be even more elusive. Indeed, ISIS launched at least one propaganda site on the dark web—a portion of the Internet requiring anonymous web browsing, not accessible through regular browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla, or Internet Explorer—in November 2015, which made its “material more resilient to take-downs” and helped to “protect the identity of the group’s supporters” (Cox 2015). Some point out that this result is worth the risk when compared to the damage ISIS can do to the tune of millions of communications a day. Compelling terrorist organizations to operate in secret does make plots more difficult to intercept, experts note; but in the case of ISIS, some argue that it is a trade-off worth making (Burgess 2016).
The goal of those who wish to avoid the dark web option is to focus on human sourcing of messaging; take out the top of the hierarchy; and, in the words of Google Jigsaw’s Jared Cohen, “push the remaining rank and file into the digital equivalent of a remote cave” (Cohen 2015). Although ISIS has reportedly set up a dark website as of 2015, it still leaves the vast majority of Internet users sheltered from online exposure to the group’s propaganda videos and calls to action (Gilbert 2015). In this way, it becomes a deterrent to recruitment, leaving those who have already claimed membership in ISIS to follow the group to the dark web.
Some point to the usefulness of the open web as a source of information and to the detrimental aspects of pushing ISIS recruits to the dark web. They emphasize the value of collecting data on potential terrorists. Experts agree that there is intelligence value to be gleaned from watching the Internet and keeping these exchanges in the open cyber sphere. As one terrorism expert explains, “In the short term, the most promising way for dealing with the presence of violent extremists and their propaganda on the Internet is to exploit their online communications to gain intelligence and gather evidence in the most comprehensive and systematic fashion possible” (Neumann 2013, 453).
But the value of this may be minimal given the vast amount of activity on the open web and the difficulties of determining the difference between expression and activity. As in terrorism cases generally, identifying the line between extremist expression and terrorist action requires knowledge and judgment. “In this American democracy, we don’t want our social media providers to be acting as essentially secret police,” said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There is a first amendment right to talk about terrorism… . Discussing controversial political, religious, social events of our time is absolutely protected speech. And requiring social media providers to rat out their customers for engaging in their first amendment right to debate important topics is not something that is constitutional” (Ross and Schwartz 2015).
Specific concerns about targeting Muslims have colored the CVE programs initiated by the White House, including those that have engaged civilian groups. One legal counterargument has emerged pointing out that freedom of speech has been regulated in telecommunications for a long time. Telephone harassment is illegal in all fifty states. One comprehensive analysis concludes, “This point needs to be crystal clear: social media companies can and do control speech on their platforms. No user of a mainstream social media service enjoys an environment of complete freedom. Instead, companies apply a wide range of conditions limiting speech, using possibly opaque guidelines that may result in decisions executed on an ad hoc basis. Furthermore, companies typically do not disclose information about who they suspend and why, nor are they required to” (Berger and Morgan 2015, 60).
The choice of whom to monitor, and under what conditions, remains murky and potentially full of legal potholes. Despite the telephone precedents, the regulations for the Internet are less clear. Currently, a variety of new products claim the ability to use algorithms and linguistic analysis and other means to predict who is headed down the road to radicalization. The realistic predictive value of such measures, however, is problematic and largely untested. Moreover, studies suggest that there are too many false positives in this approach. Technologist Bruce Schneier compares the use of algorithms for detecting potential terrorists to the attempts to pinpoint a rare disease, something equally “unique and rare.” “When a disease is very rare, if your test tests positive, it’s almost always wrong, because your chances of having that disease are one in a million… . Out of a million people, 10,000 would test positive—but chances are only one would really have the disease. And you wouldn’t know which one. Now imagine the odds are one in 100 million, amid many hundreds of millions of social media postings. Imagine how many posts would be deleted or referred to law enforcement in error” (McLaughlin 2016).
Finally, the thin line between industry monitoring of accounts and law enforcement’s involvement is legally troubling inside the industry itself. Tech companies have recently refused to comply with government insistence that the information the companies have access to should be available to the government. Apple refused to design an encryption key for breaking into the phone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. Microsoft is now protesting the government’s gag orders for accounts that are being surveilled and investigated. Facebook and YouTube initially provided for ways to tag terrorist content, but Twitter did not, making exceptions for banning incitements to violence (Stern and Berger 2015; Albergotti and Koh 2014). In October 2014, Twitter sued the government, saying that the government should provide more transparency about what it was doing with this surveillance (Nakashima 2014).
After more than a decade of secretive overreaching by the government—which, when exposed, led to the sunsetting of policies aimed at broad collection of telephone and Internet data—the current appetite for the collection of search engine material and content beyond that openly found on social media platforms could potentially open the fissure between government and cyber businesses even wider. The White House and lawmakers have made an analogy between the detection and reporting of child pornography online to the detection and reporting of terrorists online. In the context of ISIS, the tech companies would be expected to monitor the content put forward by their users and report “terrorist activity” to law enforcement. This not only raises legal and constitutional issues but also issues of expertise: who knows how to identify terrorists or potential terrorists. As some have pointed out, the detection of terrorists could ultimately rely upon a series of vague assumptions, and as terrorists are extremely small in number relative the overall population, this tactic might render the effort nearly impossible (Trujillo 2016).
Diversion and alternative engagement
Diversion and alternative engagement make up the second element of online counterterrorism programs. As early as April 2012, the State Department launched a “viral peace campaign” aimed at individuals in Southeast Asia. The program was designed “to use social media as a way of promoting community involvement and peaceful change” and “to help people craft online strategies that use a whole range of tools—including ‘logic, humor, satire, [and] religious arguments’—to match the violent extremists’ energy and enthusiasm” (Neumann 2013, 446). Now Google has developed a program of diversion for those who search for certain terms. When a user searches for certain terms or topics, their requests are diverted to nongovernmental organization (NGO) sites where countermessaging occurs. The Google Adwords Grants Program, following the long-term business strategy of Google, gives credits to NGOs to purchase ads for counter-radicalization messaging that will appear at the top of searches identified with the attraction to radicalization (Ward-Bailey 2016). Thus, any nonprofit or NGO can place counter-radicalization ads against search terms of their choosing that carry terrorist or radicalized connotations. For example, the Council on American and Islamic Relations (CAIR) can now create and promulgate ads and narratives countering radical interpretations of Islam that will appear whenever someone enters “violent jihad” into Google. For Google executives, this is about more than rebuttal; it is about hope. “We should get the bad stuff down, but it’s also extremely important that people are able to find good information, that when people are feeling isolated, that when they go on-line, they find a community of hope, not a community of harm,” a top executive at Google explained (Quinn 2016).
Similarly, nonvirtual counterterrorism strategies suggest alternatives that encourage diversion to those individuals determined to serve a cause larger than themselves—a strong part of ISIS’s appeal to American youth (Center on National Security 2016). The United Nation’s (UN) Strong Cities program encourages NGOs such as community organizations and youth-oriented organizations to develop their own counterterrorism, counter-radicalization programs independently. In addition, the UN has developed such a strategy in the peace network proposed by the UN’s Counterterrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF). These programs seek to address the underlying reasons for people’s interest in ISIS: loneliness, desperation, and naïveté. Some of these programs have also reached out to engage Muslim communities. As a recent synopsis from the Carter Center concludes, “Muslim religious and community leaders have an important role to play in discrediting and preventing violent extremism as they hold unique positions of authority, credibility, and communal ties” (Abadi 2016). Moreover, they often understand the cultural reference points that ISIS propaganda relies on, and can potentially turn youth toward more constructive outlets and activities, as well as helping NGOs to develop models for integration as an antidote to radicalization (Ben-Meir 2015).
Countermessaging
In addition to disruption and diversion, a third and growing element in the government’s online counterterrorism strategy has been the dissemination of counternarratives, or countermessages. Following the White House announcement of a counter-radicalization strategy that addressed the role of the Internet in promoting violent extremism, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) was created in September 2011 in an effort to deter al-Qaeda followers. From 2011 to 2014, CSCC launched aggressive countermessaging against ISIS in both Arabic and English (Fernandez 2015, 4,15).
In February 2015, President Obama held a summit to discuss additional methods of CVE. A year later, in March 2016, the president issued an Executive Order creating the Global Engagement Center (GEC) designed to “lead the coordination, integration, and synchronization of government-wide communications activities directed at foreign audiences abroad in order to counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorism organizations.” The GEC is tasked with finding “innovati[ve] and new approaches to counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations.” 1
These counternarratives fall largely into two categories. The first category includes discussions of Islam that correct misreadings of the Koran and the Muslim religion. These online efforts parallel nationwide programs in which individuals are taught by Imams and others schooled in knowledge of Islam that killing and suicide missions and brutality are anathema to traditional Islam. This strain of counternarrative has been central to counter-radicalization programs world wide, from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia to the UK. They rely to some extent, however, on an individual being connected to a mosque or a larger community. This approach is out of sync with the known details of the lives of many ISIS recruits. In reality, individuals in the United States who are drawn to ISIS are often loners who do not necessarily interact with a mosque or respond to authority of an imam (Callimachi 2015). At least one expert has suggested that Muslim leaders need to rise to this challenge, finding ways to connect with distant youth and “enhance their media capabilities and communication strategies so that they can effectively discredit ISIS propaganda” (Abadi 2015). Here, as elsewhere, the counter narrative is seen as most effective when paired with religious leaders making similar efforts offline, “through the use of local dialects, shorter and interactive sermons, safe space[s] for women, and local initiatives for youth” (Abadi 2015).
A second popular counternarrative refutes the idealization of life inside the Caliphate. Instead of a perfect, protected, peaceful life, viewers see images of rape, death, and general suffering for members of the Caliphate. In mid-April 2016, the GEC’s webpage posted a series of videos under the title “Life under Daesh.” Individual videos in the series included episodes devoted to discreet topics such as “food, healthcare, and violence” under Daesh. The 90-minute videos expose the hypocrisy of ISIS. The videos pit the recruitment promises of ISIS against the realities of life once the recruit arrives. The most recent video, on “family,” posits family as the true antidote to ISIS. “Family is LOVE. ISIS is HATRED. Family is TRUTH. ISIS is LIES. Family is DECENT. ISIS is VULGAR.” The list goes on.
Returning foreign fighter testimonials have also lately contributed to the debunking of ISIS. This strategy has proven popular in countries where there is a significant number of returning fighters. Although the United States does not have a significant population of foreign fighters, policy-makers still see the narrative as useful to deterrence in the United States. On April 26, the House passed a bill “To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to use the testimonials of former or estranged violent extremists or their associates in order to counter terrorist recruitment, and for other purposes (e.g., community engagement, etc.)” (U.S. House of Representatives 2016).
Those from other countries, who have traveled abroad and found the Caliphate to be other than what was promised, have gruesome stories to tell, and those stories can deter those who are considering joining ISIS (Draper 2014; Kenworthy 2016; Malik 2015). But the question remains, Who should be responsible for generating this counternarrative? The British program, Prevent, as well as earlier counter-radicalization programs in the United States, have led many to conclude that government-sponsored efforts can be ineffective and counterproductive. The government as messenger diminishes the power of the message: “every time officials try to win trust, they are met with the accusation that they are treating Muslims as a ‘suspect community’” (Casciani 2014). In addition, as a House Homeland Security report on “Countering Violent Extremist Programs” pointed out, Prevent failed largely because it did not include Muslims before it implemented its program. In fact, because it focused on Muslims as suspects and excluded them in the creation of the program, Prevent “inadvertently created a relationship of mistrust. This compromised the goal of community engagement and support and potentially helped create an environment ripe for extremist recruitment based on the resentment of the British government” (Southers 2015).
The State Department’s counternarrative strategy overall has raised eyebrows alongside Prevent over whether, as one official reportedly explained to The New York Times, “the U.S. government should be involved in overt messaging at all” (Miller 2015). Given this caveat, and the persistent doubts about the effectiveness of the program, the U.S. government has recently turned to the private sector for online and interpersonal counternarrative programs, enlisting not only NGOs but college students to create countermessaging. “Over the past year, the Departments of State and Homeland Security have partnered with Facebook and EdVenture Partners to create the Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism program” (Wagner 2015). As part of this program, students from universities across the globe compete against each other to “develop and execute campaigns and social media strategies against extremism that are credible, authentic, and believable to their peers and resonate within their communities.” 2 These student-designed strategies involve rudimentary advertising techniques as well as direct engagement, as in chat rooms. At least one of the college-based programs—at West Point Military Academy—consisted of students posing as ISIS members to lure individuals away from ISIS. Several NGOs have also developed their own counternarrative strategies. Over the last two years, a number of notable efforts have been launched, including video series produced by the Arab Center for Scientific Research and Humane Studies and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (Cohen 2015, 56).
To date, the absence of Muslims in some of these programs runs the risk of diluting their impact. The counternarrative can preach inclusion, but the reality is that the discourse in the country is often publicly anti-Muslim and unwelcoming to those who practice Islam. Prominent voices in politics and elsewhere in the United States, most notably presidential candidate Donald Trump, have called for the exclusion of Muslim refugees and immigrants and the monitoring of Muslim neighborhoods (Kopal 2015). The impact of these attitudes on the narratives of the individuals who are drawn to ISIS in the United States is revealing. Those individuals often feel that they are unable to practice their religion without persecution. As one teenagers who tried to leave the country to fight with ISIS proclaimed, “The truth is, Mama, I could not bear to live in that land, a land that is haram to live in, the land whose people mock my Allah, my beloved prophet, the commands of Allah, his law. The ones who are using my money to kill my brothers and sisters.” 3 Such impressions can hardly lead a young Muslim to reasonably expect to have a successful (religious) future in the United States. The messaging that ignores this reality will likely fall on deaf ears.
Countering ISIS’s message should involve not only the Internet but the realities for Muslims on the ground. It is important to be especially attentive to the intersection of the reality on the ground and the message being delivered. For example, collateral damage from drone strikes and the mistreatment and abuse of prisoners (Abu Ghraib pictures figure into ISIS propaganda to this day) appear frequently in ISIS videos (Fernandez 2015). Recent reports on countering ISIS’s messaging point to the need to avoid lies and deception as part of the counternarrative. Realism in countermessaging on the web reinforces the close connection between online efforts at counter-radicalization and offline efforts at the community and policy levels.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Online counter-radicalization is a delicate business. The manipulative pitfalls are not the only worries. So too are the many constitutional and legal protections. Where and how law enforcement gets involved is tricky. As Peter Neumann points out, “Constitutional free speech protections in the United States are extensive, which means that the vast majority of the content that qualifies as extremist or radicalizing would be protected under the First Amendment” (Neumann 2013, 438).
The private sector is not bound by the same constraints. Still, the tactic of assuming a fake identity as a means of promoting a government sponsored message—referred to as “ventriloquism”—has received criticism when it comes to private entities that receive government funding as a condition of either promoting or refraining to promote specific messages (Greene 2000, 4). Once distrust occurs in the private sector, it will likely prove extremely difficult to enact counternarrative strategies of any sort.
In each iteration of its counter-radicalization strategies, the government has mentioned the need to respect civil liberties and to stay within the bounds of the Constitution. But there are a variety of legal and constitutional issues that could be addressed by defining the contours of any new countermessaging strategies. This is for another article, but, overall, there needs to be upfront recognition of the legal parameters of the policies at the government and private levels. For example, the way in which information from the Internet is reported to legal authorities and by whom needs to be vetted and codified, so that there is transparency about how such information collection is done, by whom, and with what level of criminal liability. Along with the Fourth Amendment issues, First Amendment issues will need to be outlined.
While the counternarrative has evolved over time, there is to date scant confidence in the success of these efforts, particularly for the newer programs. One problem with counter-radicalization programs has been the absence of metrics. But online, there can be tangible results. The decline in certain search words and the lack of Twitter hashtags, for example, are eminently measurable. These metrics should be collected regularly and the strategies evaluated in response to what the metrics tell us.
The Internet, the dominant communication space of our era, can be a vital tool against terrorism. For the Internet to be a security ally, it must employ all three aspects of counter-radicalization identified in this article—disruption, diversion, and countermessaging—but it must do so in a way that recognizes the limitations of government and that puts trust in the citizenry and in private companies to coalesce around the notion that a safe society can result from cautionary measures carried out in informed ways.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1. Online counter-radicalization activities should be understood as part of a larger integrated counter-radicalization effort. They do not and should not exist in a void
As much as reliance on the Internet for counter-radicalization makes sense, the Internet should be seen as one tool among many, rather than as a one-stop panacea. Any attempt at curbing the cyber proliferation of extremist materials, in any form, must be made with the understanding that the Internet is not the only battleground. Online countermeasures must be coordinated with similar antiradicalization activities that take place outside of virtual space. Relying on the Internet exclusively, or even too heavily, can have negative consequences. Coordination with other counterterrorism messages will ensure that the Internet programs do not collide with other programs’ goals and methods.
Recommendation 2. Disruption can work
Taking sites down can stem the spread of ISIS recruitment. The statistics bear this out. What is important in the disruption framework is who does the disruption; at the time of this writing, private companies have been entrusted with identifying material that needs to be removed. It would be useful to let individuals online report inappropriate and seemingly dangerous content to the companies. This does not preclude the need for private surveillance of the web, but it shifts some of the burden to the consumer.
Recommendation 3. The messenger matters
Who delivers the countermessage online is important, as it is in person. Muslim voices and guidance need to be involved in messaging strategies. To date, policy-makers have made no explicit or systematic effort to include individuals with a deep knowledge of Islamic law and culture or those who understand teens and late adolescents as message generators. Both should be called upon to help devise these programs from the outset to enhance the effectiveness of the programs by reaching the individuals attracted to ISIS online. The messaging should come at least in part from groups and people possessing an intimate familiarity with Islam, the Muslim world, American Muslim communities, and American youth generally. Accordingly, it only makes sense to coordinate meaningfully with Muslim community stakeholders, who understand best that Muslims have just as much of an interest in halting the spread of extremism as anybody else. Further, because people are less likely to trust or even entertain the messenger unless the individual or organization possesses a certain level of credibility, it is necessary that virtual counterextremism messaging is independent not only from the government but also from government-controlled voices.
Recommendation 4. Interactive messaging should take precedence over broadcast messaging
Interactive communications are essential for an effective online counter-radicalization strategy. The point is to engage, rather than to lecture. It is important to engage child psychologists, university psychiatry programs, those who understand Muslim culture, and youth counselors in finding new ways to draw young people away from virtual reality and back into the real world. Online interactivity can provide therapy, an antidote to isolation and alienation, and a growth experience. Talking on Skype, direct messaging on Twitter are but some examples. As one recruit wrote, after she began receiving constant messages and signs of affection from ISIS recruiters, “I have brothers and sisters now. I am crying.” Engagement should be as much about countering alienation and isolation as about countering radicalization.
Recommendation 5. Countermessaging should not be static but should alter as necessary with new information about radicalization
Countermessengers should be attentive to the evolving nature of ISIS’s message and to detailed information about who joins ISIS and why. There have been gaps between the design of countermessaging programs and the reality on the ground. For example, the idea of using mosques and imams for de-radicalization may only matter if the potential recruits are in touch with those institutions and religious leaders. Moreover, the refutation of ISIS’s message needs to be responsive to the current dominant narratives underlying recruitment, whether they be about the Islamic religion itself, the persecution of Muslims, or the foreign policy of the United States.
Recommendation 6. Driving ISIS to use the dark web can be a worthwhile outcome
Getting ISIS off of popular platforms diminishes their reach and their effectiveness. It is akin to pushing them into a cave, as some have noted. Intervention that makes the point of radicalization more elusive gets at the heart of the matter—recruitment—which takes place on the open web where the not-yet-indoctrinated proliferate. Making ISIS relocate its propaganda to the Internet’s darkest depths makes people less likely to actually join or act on its behalf. The dark web forces ISIS into the shadows, making it more difficult for American citizens to start down the extremist rabbit hole.
Recommendation 7. Providing valuable, realistic alternative narratives online is essential
Part of ISIS’s allure lies in the adventures, missions, and/or inclusiveness it promises to isolated, often troubled, youth. Accordingly, NGOs and others should be empowered to find compelling causes that youth can join online. Because of the relatively young age of ISIS recruits in the United States, the FBI has turned in some cases to diversion rather than arrest. Internet voices should do likewise. Last year, the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate even conceded that alternatives to criminal prosecution were desirable, particularly when an individual has not yet attempted to travel to ISIS territory (UN CTED 2015). This avenue should be enhanced and empowered. What other causes can satisfy those who are isolated, disenfranchised, and looking for a mission and a cause greater than themselves?
Recommendation 8. The truth matters; distortions of fact are counterproductive
Those charged with countering the narrative online should not only point out the lies that ISIS spreads, as the State Department program did, but provide valuable, realistic facts. Manipulation, and impersonation is counterproductive. As more and more people successfully flee ISIS’s grasp, it is becoming easier to publish counternarratives that devalue ISIS’s fantastic misrepresentation of Islam. In addition, there are numerous voices that are willing to combat the vicious messages of ISIS. There is no need to stretch the truth or promote propaganda of a different kind. It is enough to make accurate information about ISIS readily available. The perils of losing credibility are immense.
Recommendation 9. Dissemination of narratives of disillusion can have a profound impact
Returning foreign fighters’ voices provide a valuable counternarrative. Disillusionment, portrayals of hardship and brutality—even toward members of ISIS—can be an effective form of deterrence, provided that the message is not manipulated or distorted.
Recommendation 10. Metrics
A series of metrics needs to be developed to assess the strength of these programs. For example, decreasing the number of ISIS Twitter followers and decreasing attention to other social media platforms that ISIS uses are important. An increased number of visitors to alternative sites—such as those that offer a hopeful, constructive vision of life in the United States for those who feel alienated, excluded, and are drawn to violence—would also be a useful metric. Here, as elsewhere, social psychologists could also be consulted for ways to measure changes in behavior and attitudes over time.
Recommendation 11. Legal/civil liberties analysis up front
There needs to be a transparent legal analysis that accompanies each of the strategies for online counter-radicalization. This will enable whatever programs are created to persist into the future on strong foundations. Up-front recognition of specific constitutional principles would be preferable to a blanket nod to civil liberties and constitutional principles. The Apple/FBI debate was a harbinger of a growing determination of private companies to safeguard their domains from government oversight and intrusion. Addressing issues of profiling, of surveillance authorities, and of social media regulations sooner rather than later could lead to more consistency and effectiveness in carrying out online antiradicalization strategies.
Footnotes
NOTE:
Andrew Dalack contributed to this article. Thanks also to Matthew Grier and Maxine Jacobson.
Notes
Karen J. Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and the author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State and The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days (Crown 2016). She writes frequently about national security, civil liberties, and the war on terror.