In today's studio session, we redid and enhanced our web from last week, shifting to a "maintaining and growing ISIS" inner circle. How ISIS achieves this, we decided, is through recruitment, news outlets, funding, and their leaders. More importantly, what we saw again was that social media has shaped each of these branches, contributing to our idea that soical media is at the center of ISIS and the reason the movement has had any success.
In studio session today the group was able to make a multitude of connections within the wide area of Bitcoin; from social media and consumer confidence, to transnationalism and the governance of cryptocurrency. A few interesting ties became apparent such as the government's increasing use of bitcoin in research of new voting methods. The irony of governments using a decentralized currency in its democratic election process is very interesting. Another connection was made between consumer confidence and social media.
This week was interesting because we began to group together and separate the different aspects that make the ISIS terrorist group so successful. What we ultimately determined was that social media, as made possible by the Internet, is what the ISIS movement, in all of its forms, is centered around.
The group first tried to determine what topics and articles that we would write on the vast topic that is Bitcoin. Alex, a 4th year Computer Science major on the team, led the group’s discussion as he is currently working on a large Bitcoin related social media project. The first step was trying to get a better understanding of exactly what Bitcoin is and how it works a form of exchange.
In class today, my group began to research ISIS and its prevalence in social media and the world stage at large. I had heard plenty about ISIS before--a group responsible for the killings of thousands that are not a part of the muslim faith. It is a radical-hate group supported by many all over the world, and they believe that by killing off non-muslims they are helping support and create an Islamic state. After today's session I learned that their efforts are proliferated and furthered by their use of social media.