In early 2015, Amira Abase and Shamima Begum, both 15-year-old girls, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, boarded a plane from England to Turkey. From there the teens crossed over to Syria to join the Islamic State (otherwise referred to as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh).
The story of these London schoolgirls captured widespread media attention, driving headlines and leaving the world haunted by Shamima Begum’s last words to Umm Layth, a female ISIS member, on Twitter: “follow me so I can dm [direct message] you back.”
Twitter, in particular, has proven to be a powerful recruitment tool for ISIS, allowing members of the terrorist group to engage with young people anywhere in the world on a daily basis in an ever-changing cascade of DMs, hashtags, and private accounts that bedevil even the most diligent surveillance efforts.
Just as ISIS managed to cow the much larger Iraqi Army, the terrorist organization has also succeeded in convincing the world that legions of social media followers are fueling a huge surge in recruits coming from Western nations and elsewhere.
That isn't necessarily true. According to the ISIS Twitter Census, a research project by the Brookings Institution to map Twitter usage by the terrorist group, the ISIS global social media juggernaut on Twitter consisted primarily of a few hundred accounts with thousands more (69%) tweeting only a few times or getting suspended. Overall, the study found, a small group of highly effective ISIS social media users has captured global attention and amplified impressions of the organization far beyond its actual numbers.
But on average, ISIS-supporting accounts still tweeted with greater frequency than the typical Twitter user. In total, an estimated 133,422 tweets per day were sent from all suspected ISIS-linked users, according to the Brookings study.
The census study, by researcher J.M. Berger and data scientist Jonathan Morgan, surveyed 20,000 Twitter accounts that through content or hashtag usage appeared to be affiliated with ISIS. The researchers not only observed a decrease in Twitter activity, primarily due to suspensions, but also ultimately found that the ISIS follower base actually represents a “small number of people” and that the network itself is “internally focused.”
In other words, a lot of the activity comes from a prolific inner circle. According to the findings, nearly half of all followers of ISIS-supporting accounts were also ISIS tweeters within the dataset.
The 2014 ISIS surge happened on Twitter, too
The year 2014 was huge for ISIS: they intensified their recruitment efforts, made dramatic territorial gains, cut their ties with al-Qaeda, and declared an Islamic caliphate with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its leader.
Twitter handles apparently under the sway of ISIS and its predecessor organization Al Qaeda in Iraq have been gradually increasing between 2008-2014. By 2014, the number of ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts reached an estimated 11,902. Nearly 60% of all ISIS-supporting accounts were created in 2014 and only 1.3% of existing accounts were created prior to 2010.
What’s more, the bulk of this ISIS Twitter account creation surge took place in a single month: September 2014.
During that month, the US and its allies launched air strikes against ISIS militants in Syria while Twitter began an energetic crackdown on ISIS-affiliated accounts. Since the fall of 2014, ISIS’s Twitter activity has actually declined, especially in terms of retweets and replies within the network, according to the study.
Locating ISIS's Twitter army
Where were ISIS-supporting users actually tweeting from?
Surprisingly, some ISIS-supporting users had tweets with a location-enabled coordinate; in fact, 1.5% of the sample size enabled location data “on at least one tweet out of their last 200.” Approximately 28% of Twitter users that enabled their location were located in either controlled or contested areas in Iraq and Syria, places that were either inside or near the ISIS "Caliphate."
Beyond this 1.5%, the majority of ISIS-supporting users opted out of enabling their location. Researchers still attempted to pinpoint these users by analyzing their accounts by the location selected in their profile.
Large percentages of users claimed that they were in Saudi Arabia (866), Syria (507), Iraq (453), or the US (404). However, this data may not necessarily be accurate as location selection on Twitter is a “free-form” text field where users can enter any unverified or metaphorical location — whether it’s Baghdad or “in the kitchen making a sandwich.” So although hundreds of ISIS supporters selected the US as their location, the authors believe that this was misleadingly done “to create the appearance of a homeland threat.”
Smartphones and bots
A majority of ISIS-supporting users that use smartphones to access Twitter are likely Team Android, not Team Apple.
An estimated 69% of users tweeted with an Android smartphone, while a smaller percentage of users, 30%, used an Apple iPhone. Only 1% of users used a Blackberry phone.
Although ISIS announced an iPhone ban in mid-December 2014 for security reasons, the ISIS Twitter Census only found a 1% decrease in iPhone usage among ISIS-supporting accounts in February 2015. It seems that some ISIS supporters are either not adhering to directions or are just too thrilled by the latest iPhone upgrade to make the switch to Android.
Some ISIS-supporters don't even write their own organic tweets, resorting to bots and applications to facilitate their activity on Twitter. Some used popular Twitter client-apps such as Hootsuite and Tweetbot, while others used non-client apps such as Knz Muslim, Du3a, and Twitquran. These applications automatically sent tweets daily — from tweets of prayers to verses of the Quran and other related content.
Knz Muslim, the most popular Twitter non-client app, yielded over a million tweets per day, on average, or 1,000 tweets per minute, sometime in January 2015.
As for what the whole range of ISIS-supporting Twitter users were tweeting and sharing: An analysis of 5.3 million tweets revealed that at least 26% of the top-100 hashtags contained the “Islamic State” in its four alternate spellings. In fact, ISIS-references represented approximately 40% of the top-100 hashtags, followed by hashtags referencing Twitter suspensions at 9%, and references to Syria, at 4%. Twitter suspensions are ISIS supporters’ worst nightmare; many users repeatedly stated that these suspensions were “devastating” and called upon supporters to continue creating new accounts.
For now, Twitter remains ISIS’ weapon of choice when it comes to both dissemination of information and recruitment of potential members. As Twitter wages aggressive account suspensions, ISIS supporters continue voicing their devastation and concern.
Frustration with ISIS’ online presence has grown — even leading hacktivist group Anonymous to target ISIS-supporting networks on social media and to flood ISIS-affiliated accounts with images of Japanese anime characters.
Despite such efforts, the ISIS supporter population persists on the social networking site. In April 2015, Amira Abase, one of the schoolgirls that crossed to Syria in early 2015 to join the Islamic State, made headlines once again. She provided a short glimpse into her new life in the Islamic State, posting a brief tweet along with a public picture of a fast food meal of pizza, fries, and some kebab —before Twitter finally suspended her.
Ruba Aleryani is an undergraduate at Brown University pursuing a degree in Development and Middle East Studies. She is currently a Data Journalism Intern at Silk.co.
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