Social media
platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, are very convenient, affordable
and can be reached to mass very quickly and efficiently. These tools have been
very useful in case of crisis management, emergencies and spreading
humanitarian messages. This is being used for e-commerce also by business
organizations. However, in recent past a few terrorist groups have increasingly used
social media to further their goals and spread their message. Terrorist
organizations depend on the open media systems of democratic countries to
further their message and goals. The terrorist threat to a wider audience,
particularly in the open and pluralistic countries of the West is easy to be
propagated through social media. The recent example is threat to France for
more terrorist attacks. In principle, media organization are neither
propagating nor supporting the goals of terrorist organization. However they
are doing their job to report current events and issues. In the fiercely
competitive media environment, when a terrorist attack occurs, media outlets
scramble to cover the event. In doing so the media also spreads the messages of
terrorist organizations.
In a
study by Gabriel Weimann from the University of Haifa,
Weimann found that nearly 90% of organized terrorism on the
internet takes place via social media. According to Weimann, terror
groups use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and internet
forums to spread their messages, recruit members and gather intelligence.
Some
U.S. government officials have urged social media companies to stop hosting
content from terror groups. In 2008, Lieberman and the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs issued a report titled "Violent
Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat". The
report stated that the internet is one of the "primary drivers" of
the terrorist threat to the United States.
In
January 2012, Twitter announced changes to their censorship policy, stating
that they would now be censoring tweets in certain countries when the tweets
risked breaking the local laws of that country. The reason behind the move was
stated to restrict certain types of content. However, it may be good strategy
to censor tweets, it may have been more successful, if, such tweets are shared
with concerned intelligence agencies also. Unfortunately, current U.S. law gives few
incentives for companies like YouTube for volunteering information on illicit
activity, or even cooperating when requested by U.S. law enforcement. If such
companies are to be trusted to self-police their own professed commitments to
fighting hate speech, and incentive is granted to share such contents with
intelligence agencies without removing their blogs, tweets etc. then the
intelligence agencies can take more effective steps. Further, the public relation should step in to the business of engaging with social media for blogging, tweeting etc. against the hate speeches etc. Thus social media is capable of helping nations to fight against terror, if it is efficiently and effectively used without politics.
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