Soliciting Terror: ISKP Digital Communications and Financing Tactics Through Voice of Khurasan

 Abstract

This study explores the digital strategies employed by the Islamic State's Khorasan Province (ISKP), focusing on its Voice of Khurasan magazine, which serves as a platform for propaganda, fundraising, and communication. Through descriptive and focused analyses of 40 issues, the study identifies ISKP's integration of cryptocurrency, particularly Monero, for anonymous donations, and its innovative use of dual communication platforms, Telegram and Rocket.Chat, to maintain operational secrecy. The research highlights the role of Quranic verses in legitimising donation requests and the shift to decentralized platforms in response to counterterrorism efforts. It underscores the challenges posed by ISKP's digital strategies and calls for enhanced collaboration between governments, technology companies, and blockchain analysts to counter these threats. This multi-disciplinary approach aims to disrupt terrorist networks while balancing privacy and security in the digital age.

LINK: https://gnet-research.org/2024/12/12/soliciting-terror-iskp-digital-communications-and-financing-tactics-through-voice-of-khurasan/

A Hashtag Perspective: Examining ISIS Supporter Activities on Twitter in Türkiye between 2019 and 2022

This study explores the Twitter activities of Turkish supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from 2019 to 2022, focusing on hashtag usage patterns. As a central part of ISIS's online strategy, hashtags are pivotal in disseminating propaganda, coordinating campaigns, and soliciting support. By analyzing 202,327 tweets, this research offers insights into thematic priorities and interconnections within ISIS-related discourse. Employing descriptive and network analyses, key findings reveal a steady increase in ISIS-supportive tweets, the emergence of clusters around aid and familial support, and distinct, unconnected hashtag groups reflecting various narratives. Hashtags related to financial aid, such as #saveprisoners and #elholcamp, emerge as central, highlighting a covert system of funding through social media and encrypted communication. This paper underscores the complexity of ISIS's digital influence in Türkiye, emphasizing the need for multifaceted countermeasures involving tech platforms, security forces, and media awareness campaigns to combat online extremist activities effectively.

LINK: https://gnet-research.org/2024/08/07/a-hashtag-perspective-examining-isis-supporter-activities-on-twitter-in-turkiye-between-2019-and-2022/

Examining the Japanese Fear of ISIS with Soft Terrorism Concept

 ABSTRACT

Terrorism has emerged as a paramount challenge in recent times. With current terrorist organizations adeptly embracing internet technologies and seamlessly integrating them into their strategies, the landscape of terrorism has evolved into a multifaceted global concern. For instance, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has had a negative impact not only on the citizens of the countries they directly target but also on the psychology of individuals in non-targeted countries through their internet-focused strategies. Despite not carrying out any attacks on Japan, the majority of the Japanese perceive ISIS as a significant threat to their nation. This finding serves as a prime example of how a terrorist organization like ISIS, utilizing internet strategies proficiently, can detrimentally affect individuals in non-targeted countries. This study demonstrates how the soft terrorism concept elucidates the heightened fear of ISIS in Japan. By conducting a Google Trends analysis, the Japanese case is examined in this research. The findings indicate that the soft terrorism activities of ISIS have both short-term and long-term adverse effects on the Japanese, primarily attributed to the dissemination of brutal images and videos posted by ISIS on the internet, as posited by the soft terrorism concept. 

LINK: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ajas/issue/85559/1458636

THE IMPACT OF THE SOFT TERRORISM CONCEPT ON KOREANS AND JAPANESE

The development of social media and Internet technologies has increased the speed of news, and people have gained immediate access to information on many issues. However, it has also affected terrorist organizations by changing their methods, strategies, and visions. With these new methods and strategies, today’s terrorist organizations negatively affect the psychology of South Koreans and Japanese, who are not targets of global terrorism. Recent studies have shown that a significant proportion of Japanese and South Koreans are worried about terrorism despite their limited history of terrorism compared with the rest of the world. This research suggests that the fear of terrorism in these countries could be explained using the concept of soft terrorism. This study performed a quantitative analysis of the seventh wave of the World Values Survey using the ordinal logistic regression (OLR) method, finding that the fear of terrorism is attributed to active media sources such as the Internet for South Koreans and passive media sources such as social media for the Japanese.

• DOI: 
• 10.31720/JGA.6.1.9

RELATED LINK: https://iga.pknu.ac.kr:446/html/jga/online-jga.php?mode=view&idx=20

ARE TAIWANESE AFRAID OF TERRORISM? THE IMPACTS OF HARD AND SOFT TERRORISM ON TAIWANESE

Technological developments in the last 20 years have affected people's daily lives and caused many innovations. The internet and social media are among the most important developments, and these developments have led to an increase in the speed of news and people's rapid access to information on various topics. However, progress in technology has also affected terrorist organisations. This effect has changed the methods, strategies, and visions of terrorist organisations. With these new methods and strategies, terrorist organisations could negatively affect the psychology of the people who are not directly affected by global terrorism. The best example of this is Taiwan. In this study, I focus on the impact of hard and soft terrorism on the Taiwanese. In this direction, I use the mixed-method approach in this study. I analyse the 7th wave of the World Values Survey with the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression method. Qualitative face-to-face interviews with Taiwanese will support the quantitative results.

Keywords:

The Soft Terrorism Strategy; The Hard Terrorism Strategy; Taiwan; Social media; Mass media

Related Link: http://global.ir.fisip.ui.ac.id/index.php/global/article/view/715 

The Roles and Impact of Mass Media and Social Media in Terrorism in Southeast Asia

 Southeast Asia is home to the world’s many emerging economies. Southeast Asian

countries have democratized over the years. They are rich in natural resources and

offer many opportunities for trade. However, terrorism has come to threaten the

economic opportunities in Southeast Asia in recent years.

The ghost of terrorism is a global problem. It is a ghost that has that

frightened most of the world after coordinated terrorist attacks against the United

States on 11 September 2001 resulted in the collapse of the twin towers of the

original World Trade Center in New York. Following this terrorist attack, many

governments around the world launched a war against terrorism (Güzel 2002). This

war against terrorism is still ongoing today, and has become more intense. Southeast

Asia is part of this war and is committed to the fight against terrorism. Southeast

Asian governments have indeed been suffering from terrorist threats for a long time,

as evinced by the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia and the Battle of Marawi in the

Philippines. The threat of terrorism in the Southeast Asian region has only grown in

scope and severity over time (Teymur 2007).

LINK: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355488994_The_Roles_and_Impact_of_Mass_Media_and_Social_Media_in_Terrorism_in_Southeast_Asia?_sg=BXTrf4kBHgwquNMtdDQJQq78Mhv4Cxd9Qa0MnaFH23LvEowXcA_lbTxbmqdrb81AbBuLTFC0-k404M-nd3jORgbcZ9H00mmk4ulJ2crN.R9J8DQuc5txCyx5TkhDMdY42jesenxR_R4u2AzKcwEJbFclq0kJ0W012YY60K9qzebGbEdWGdN0DOLvBU1bwMA

The Effect Of Ethnic Participation And Ethnic Fractionalization On Terrorism in Sri Lanka

Terrorism is one of the biggest problems in the world. This problem has disturbed the people of Sri Lanka for many years. Sinhalese and Tamil, the two biggest ethnic groups of this island country, have been in conflict for many years. This study tries to analyze the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka. Besides, this study tries to reveal the causes and consequences of conflict. The main purpose of this paper is to look directly at and examine the association between ethnic participation in political life and fractionalization in Sri Lanka, and the possibility of an act of terrorism from that nation. 

Keywords: Sri Lanka, LTTE, Ethnic Participation, Ethnic Fractionalization, Terrorism

LINK: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/bader/issue/59113/850715

 ISIS Religious and Extremist Propaganda on Social Media: Dictionary-Based Study of Twitter

Abstract

The world had faced with many terrorist organizations until 2014. However, after 2014, the world faced with the most complicated terrorist organization. This terrorist organization is ISIS or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS has been running a more different propaganda campaign, emphasizing the state-building and welfare schemes run by this organization and these elements make ISIS more complicated. ISIS has been very well integrated into the new technology such as social media and smartphone and ISIS has been using them very effectively. Especially Twitter has become a major component of ISIS social media movement. Twitter was used to spread sensationalistic ISIS photos and videos across the Twitter users. While ISIS spread fear and messages on twitter, at the same time it also gained supporters. However, it is seen that ISIS’ sympathizer uses different jargons in terms of their number of followers in twitter. As a result of my research, I found that users with more followers used a stronger violence jargon on Twitter, while users with fewer followers using a softer and more religious language. Users with less followers were an emphasis on unity and religion, while users with more followers encouraging physical violence such as lone wolf attacks and killing enemy appeared more often on Twitter. Dictionary-based analysis of ISIS' and its sympathizers' tweets were performed. This dictionary-based research creates a typology to explain and categorize tweets from ISIS and its followers. For reliability, "Split-half test" was applied to the results and similar results were reached.

Keywords: ISIS, Twitter, Dictionary-Based Analysis, Propaganda

RELATED LINK: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/isis-religious-and-extremist-propaganda-social-media-dictionary-based-study-twitter

Terrorism Dilemma

Terrorism has been one of the most remarkable issues in recent years. Many scholars argue about terrorism. However, the lack of a definition of terrorism complicates the issue.

The most acceptable definition of terror in the world is the CIA's definition of terror. This study uses the CIA's definition of terrorism. According to Central Intelligence Agency (2007), terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

This definition is quite clear. Based on this definition, the YPG in Syria is a terrorist organization. However, many Western countries and the United States do not recognize YPG as terrorists. But this organization has caused the deaths of many innocent people in Turkey. Nevertheless, the media of many countries continue to have positive news about this organization. In addition, there are also positive news about the terrorist organization on Twitter.

For this purpose, sentiment and polarity analysis related with YPG in CNN, The New York Times and Twitter was performed.

                       

      

                                      Figure 1: Polarity result of CNN

Firstly, CNN's latest news about ypg is examined. The analysis revealed that the CNN's news was very positive about YPG. The most commonly used sentiment in the news about YPG is trust.

                               

                                          Figure 2: Sentiment result of CNN

            Secondly, the last news of the new york times about ypg was analyzed. Similar results were obtained with CNN. The new york times ypg news is also very positive. The most commonly used sentiment in the New York Times’ news about YPG is trust.

                                                Figure 3: Polarity result of New York Times

                                               Figure 4: Sentiment result of New York Times

Finally, the last 100 tweets about YPG on Twitter were analyzed. Twitter also has positive tweets about YPG, like CNN and New York Time. The most commonly used sentiment in twitter about YPG is fear. Tweets about ISIS raise the fear rate. That’s why fear was the most common sentiment in this anaysis.

                                      Figure 5: Polarity result of Tweets

                                      Figure 6: Sentiment result of Tweets

As seen above, there are positive views on YPG, which many countries recognize as terrorist organizations, in the media and social media. 

The relationship between Twitter and ISIS

In recent years, great development has been seen in technology. One of the most important of these technologies is social media.

The development of social media has played an important role in many social protests in recent years in the world. The best example of such social protests is the Arab Spring period.

During the Arab Spring, social media played an important role in helping people get news and organize. However, this development of social media is not only used by innocent people. Especially in recent years, terrorist organizations also benefit from the development of social media.

The most active terrorist organization on social media is ISIS. In particular, ISIS was using Twitter very actively. %90 of ISIS social media was conducted via twitter. ISIS sympathizers posted 200000 tweets per day.

Therefore, in this study, tweets of ISIS sympathizers between 2015-2016 were examined. The results of the research are as follows;

Most active 10 twitter users about ISIS
username,                         sum(weight)
Uncle_SamCoco,             1610
mobi_ayubi,                     1071
WarReporter1,                 706
warrnews,                         657
melvynlion,                      640
RamiAlLolah,                  606
MaghrabiArabi,               450
_IshfaqAhmad,                430
AsimAbuMerjem,           289
NaseemAhmed50,           251

The research was first started to analyze one of the most active users. This user is war breaking news. This user's most commonly used words are as follows;

[1] "after"       "against"     "aleppo"      "alqassam"    "amp"         "and"         "are"         "army"        "assad"       "attack"      "border"   
[12] "breaking"    "captured"    "city"        "civilians"   "claims"      "clashes"     "damascus"    "destroyed"   "dozens"      "during"      "fallujah" 
[23] "fight"       "fighters"    "for"         "forces"      "from"        "fsa"         "gaza"        "hamas"       "have"        "homs"        "huge"     
[34] "injured"     "iranian"     "iraq"        "iraqi"       "isis"        "israel"      "israeli"     "killed"      "least"       "militant"    "militants"
[45] "military"    "more"        "mosul"       "mujahid"     "near"        "new"         "news"        "nidalgazaui" "north"       "northern"    "not"     
[56] "now"         "offensive"   "one"         "over"        "palmyra"     "people"      "province"    "rebels"      "regime"      "reports"     "russia"   
[67] "russian"     "saa"         "saudi"       "sham"        "shiite"      "shot"        "soldiers"    "south"       "southern"    "suicide"     "syria"   
[78] "syrian"      "that"        "the"         "their"       "they"        "this"        "today"       "troops"      "turkey"      "turkish"     "video"   
[89] "war"         "warnews"     "was"         "were"        "who"         "will"        "with"        "ypg"

In addition to the war breaking news, the tweets of the two users were analyzed also. The first user was Fahad al-Kuwaiti.

Fahad mostly used words such as state, mujahideen and Islamic. After Fahad, the tweets of Flames of Haqq were examined.

These are the most popular words used by Flames of Haqq. In addition, the detailed list of words used by Haqq is as follows.

[1] "ahmad"        "alasma"       "allah"        "amp"          "and"          "are"          "cerantonio"   "follow"       "for"          "from"     
[11] "isis"         "jibril"       "johnsonsbot"  "just"         "keep"         "killed"       "musa"         "mustaklash"   "nby"          "one"       
[21] "our"          "palmyra"      "please"       "rer"          "sparksofirha" "str"          "that"         "the"          "this"         "today"     
[31] "ulhusna"      "video"        "warreporter"  "who"          "with"         "wwayf"        "you"          "your"

As seen in all three examples, the most commonly used words are words such as kill or killed, video, state and war. ISIS sympathizers positively propagate ISIS with these words. As a result, ISIS sympathizers make positive propaganda through twitter. The authorities should take action on this matter.

GOOD AND BAD TERRORIST

Nowadays, the world is haunted by a ghost, the ghost of terrorism. In particular, this ghost has frightened most of the people in the world after the twin towers attack in the United States on September 11, 2001.

In recent years, terrorism has been one of the most important threats in the world. This terrible threat threatens all countries in the world.

All countries must fight together against this big threat. Unfortunately, because of the lack of a common definition of terrorism, the definition of terrorism varies from country to country. This difference in definition affects all countries' war against terrorism.

The most acceptable definition of terror in the world is the CIA's definition of terror. This study uses the CIA's definition of terrorism. According to Central Intelligence Agency (2007), terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

This definition is quite clear. Based on this definition, the YPG in Syria is a terrorist organization. However, many Western countries and the United States do not recognize YPG as terrorists. But this organization has caused the deaths of many innocent people in Turkey. Nevertheless, the media of many countries continue to have positive news about this organization.

                                          Pic: 2018 YPG suicide attack in Turkey

In this study, CNN and Reuters' news about YPG between 2015-2018 were analyzed. First, CNN news was examined. In the beginning, the number of words were used in CNN about YPG was examined. The result of this examination is as follows;

             Secondly, the schema of the most used words was prepared. According to this scheme, some of the most used words are positive words such as women, life and freedom.

              Finally, sentiment analysis was performed. As a result of this analysis, it was found that the majority of the words used about YPG were positive.

            Secondly, Reuters news about YPG were examined. As a result of the analysis of the Reuters news also showed a positive attitude toward YPG like CNN. Some of the most used words in reuters are positive words such as women, equality and freedom.

           Sentiment analysis was performed also for reuters and based on the result of this analysis, it was found that the majority of the words used in reuters about YPG were positive.

            As can be seen, there are two types of terrorists. The first is bad and dangerous terrorist and the second one is good and beneficial terrorist. However, it should not be forgotten that they are both terrorists and somewhere in the world innocent people dies everyday because of these terrorist organizations.