By Francesca Collins
The Islamic State has launched a social media campaign hoping to crowdsource propaganda in an effort to combat the recent crackdowns from social media sites.
The campaign originates on Telegram, an encrypted social media that allows you to communicate with thousands at a time. Leaders on the site inform followers of their plans and encourage them to post propaganda, like, and comment on other posts. The campaign was started a couple weeks ago in an attempt to revive online presence.
The channel “Online Dawah Operation” has gained a large following since its launch a couple weeks ago, Indian news organization First Post reported Monday.
On the channel, one post said “I will share a Facebook post here at 5 pm Mosul time today…on this post that I’ll share here, we need everyone to go on and comment supporting the Islamic State. Also, whatever comments you see supporting the Islamic State, like them,” according to First Post.
The campaign gives a weekly schedule informing which platforms are to be targeted every day of the week.
“We found that Twitter’s increased willingness to suspend users and make other changes to its terms of service have measurable reduced the size and activity of ISIS support networks on the platform, including steady reductions in follower counts and tweets per day,” JM Berger, a George Washington University Program on Extremism fellow, told Lawfare Blog.
Twitter has suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts. A Brookings Institution study says that there may be over 46,000 active Twitter accounts ran by ISIS supporters.
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