Report 1: ISIS: Breaking Down Social Media Use

ISIS has two main objectives of social media use: intimidation and recruitment. They intimate and manipulate nations and people by publishing hit-lists, videos of brutal killings and tweets about falsely capturing cities so they don’t receive aid. However in-contrast they post spirited videos to attract new members with scenes of them aiding wounded soldiers and giving candy to children, and they also add an appeal factor to their campaign by making their propaganda appear action-film-esque. They utilize popular social media sites in order to target a wide audience of all ages across an expansive geographic scope, and they tactfully utilize features of each site in order to do so. ISIS takes advantage of YouTube to publish videos that range in nature. Many videos are extremely violent – showing beheadings and executions of enemies – while others are recruitment oriented highlighting positive aspects of the organization. Each type of video is meant to a target different audience. Threatening and violent videos are directed towards enemies, especially leaders and government agencies, whereas propagandist videos are directed towards the individual emphasizing the community and strength of belonging that ISIS can offer. ISIS takes to twitter as another tool to promote their rising as a nation and exhibit their presence, and their tweets tend to be more threating and utilized as a display of their power. ISIS’s use of social media is more widely and generally used to establish a presence and identity as well as gain funding. Another interesting aspect is that through ISIS’s released Hitlist, the organization has been able to localize fear in a new geographic region (the US) that their headquarters could not physically target face-to-face.