Despite increasing efforts by western governments and social media providers to counter ISIS online, ISIS Â continues to produce and disseminate large quantities of ideologically inspired audio visual content and information.
At this pivotal moment, the U.S. counter-messaging operation “is in disarray,†according to Will McCants, a Middle East scholar at the Brookings Institution. A recent report has surfaced questioning US social media strategy against ISIS only months after a previous memo reported in the New York Times concluded:that the Islamic State’s violent narrative — promulgated through thousands of messages each day — has effectively “trumped†the efforts of some of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations.  These conclusions echo the findings of research published in October 2014. This is a far cry from wildly optimistic appraisals that appeared in September 2014, in which at least one journalist claimed their research had revealed:
It’s very clear now that Twitter suspensions have seriously degraded IS ability to game hashtags and distribute content.— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) September 20, 2014
Even this year, the same commentators have questioned the “purported resilience†of the ISIS social network, regardless of the uninterrupted, large-scale and ongoing content dissemination.
Read the full post on USC CPD blog