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

Is there any relationship between terrorism and poverty?

For a long time, international relations scholars have been discussing the causes of terrorism. One of the idea raised as a result of these discussions is poverty.

According to scholars such as Krueger and Maleckova (2003), there is a connection between poverty and terrorism. They support that there is a positive correlation between poverty and terrorism. According to Krueger and Maleckova (2003), if poverty is decreased, terrorism also will be decreased.

As a result of these researches, it was decided to investigate this subject in more detail. A data set was prepared in this direction. This data set included global hunger index, number of terrorist attacks, poverty and inequality numbers.

We got the global hunger index data from unicef, poverty and inequality from World bank and number of terrorist attacks from START.

There are 3 variables in this research. These variables are number of terrorist attacks in the World, global hunger index and poverty less than 1.90 usd.

 Firstly, correlation analysis between these three variables was performed. Based on this correlation analysis, no correlation was found between poverty and terror which is the purpose of the research.

            As can be seen in the table, there is no correlation between terrorism and hunger and poverty. After the correlation analysis, linear regression analysis was performed.

Dependent variable:
	Attack
Hunger	4.413
	(3.859)
Constant	30.843
	(94.052)
Observations	69
R2	0.019
Adjusted R2	0.005
Residual Std. Error	371.463 (df = 67)
F Statistic	1.308 (df = 1; 67)
Note:	*p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

             
                  As could be seen, there is no significant relation between our variables. Linear regression analysis also confirmed the correlation analysis. As can be seen, there is no correlation between terrorism and poverty and hunger. This result is different from many sources in the literature.


REFERENCE:

Krueger, A., & Malečková, J. (2003). Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(4), 119-144. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3216934

France's bloody history in Algeria

Algeria was occupied by France in 1837. Unlike other French colonies, Algeria was directly part of France. Therefore, during the colonial period, the oppression and violence against Algeria was higher than other colonies. The violence and oppression that France imposed on Algeria had been one of the most important factors in raising awareness of the struggle against French colonialism in Algeria.

Particularly, there was a hope that the French would give positive answers to the demands of the Algerian nationalists for the reform before and during the Second World War. However, the French government ignored the expected reforms. As a result, protests and uprisings against France began.

One of these uprisings was organized by the People's Party of Algeria in 1945. The purpose of the march was to celebrate the end of the Second World War, and to honor the Algerians who fought and died in this great war in the name of France. Before this march, some ethnical problems already started between the French government and the Algerians. In addition, intellectuals such as Messali Hajj were arrested because of the Algerians' claiming more rights and talking about it. This caused problems to grow even more.

This tense walk started on March 8, 1945. During the march, the police attacked the demonstrators and many demonstrators died. Police could not control the uprising and they asked the military for help. There was a huge increase in the number of dead and wounded by the involvement of air force-backed ground forces on the uprising.

The incidents caused the Algerian independence movement to begin. After the uprising, the people of Algeria began to fight for independence against France. The war of independence, which began in 1954, ended in 1962. Millions of Algerians were killed during the war. The French call this war as "France's Vietnam war".

It was known that during the war there were many massacres by France and human rights were violated by France. However, the French authorities did not accept these crimes. However, the new French president Macron took a big step on this issue.

New President of France officially acknowledged its military’s systemic use of torture in the Algerian War in the 1950s and 1960s, a step forward in grappling with its colonial legacy. This is proof that France has begun to face with her bloody history. However, the question is whether France will accept and recognize the massacres in Algeria or not in future.

RELATED LINK: 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327666274_CEZAYIR%27DE_GECMISTEN_GUNUMUZE_ISLAMCI_HAREKETLER