TY - GEN
T1 - Analyzing deviant cyber flash mobs of ISIL on twitter
AU - Al-Khateeb, Samer
AU - Agarwal, Nitin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Transnational crime organizations and terrorist groups such as, ISIL use social media in a highly sophisticated and coordinated manner to disseminate their propaganda. Various social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, ask.fm, Tumblr, etc. are used by ISIL to recruit, radicalize, and raise funds. By doing so, they have more control on their messages and more assurance that their messages (text, photo, or video) reach many people instantly. Here, we study ISIL’s social media activity (propaganda messages, recruitment messages, etc.) and model their sociotechnical behavior as a manifestation of a deviant cyber flash mob (DCFM) behavior.We operationalize our conceptual model for analyzing DCFM, demonstrate the model’s applicability to real-world setting, evaluate the research using Twitter data, and in doing so, highlight the challenges, contributions, and broader implications of the work. The findings of the research reveal a strategic choice of platforms used by ISIL’s top disseminators for propaganda dissemination. Further, the network activity of ISIL’s top disseminators reflect a well-coordinated organization with designated roles for outreach and intra-organization communications.
AB - Transnational crime organizations and terrorist groups such as, ISIL use social media in a highly sophisticated and coordinated manner to disseminate their propaganda. Various social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, ask.fm, Tumblr, etc. are used by ISIL to recruit, radicalize, and raise funds. By doing so, they have more control on their messages and more assurance that their messages (text, photo, or video) reach many people instantly. Here, we study ISIL’s social media activity (propaganda messages, recruitment messages, etc.) and model their sociotechnical behavior as a manifestation of a deviant cyber flash mob (DCFM) behavior.We operationalize our conceptual model for analyzing DCFM, demonstrate the model’s applicability to real-world setting, evaluate the research using Twitter data, and in doing so, highlight the challenges, contributions, and broader implications of the work. The findings of the research reveal a strategic choice of platforms used by ISIL’s top disseminators for propaganda dissemination. Further, the network activity of ISIL’s top disseminators reflect a well-coordinated organization with designated roles for outreach and intra-organization communications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84925310855&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-16268-3_26
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-16268-3_26
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84925310855
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 251
EP - 257
BT - Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction - 8th International Conference, SBP 2015, Proceedings
A2 - Xu, Kevin
A2 - Agarwal, Nitin
A2 - Osgood, Nathaniel
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 8th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction, SBP 2015
Y2 - 31 March 2015 through 3 April 2015
ER -