Terrorism and social media

Due to the convenience, affordability, and broad reach of social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, terrorist groups have increasingly used social media to further their goals and spread their message. Attempts have been made by various governments and agencies to thwart the use of social media by terrorist organizations.

The relationship between terrorism and the media has long been noted. Terrorist organizations depend on the open media systems of democratic countries to further their message and goals.In order to garner publicity towards their cause, terrorist organizations resort to acts of violence and aggression that deliberately target civilians. This method has proven to be effective in gathering attention:

It cannot be denied that although terrorism has proved remarkably ineffective as the major weapon for taking down governments and capturing political power, it has been a remarkably successful means of publicizing a political cause and relaying the terrorist threat to a wider audience, particularly in the open and pluralistic countries of the West. When one says 'terrorism' in a democratic society, one also says 'media'.

While a media organization may not support the goals of terrorist organizations, it is 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 help to further the message of terrorist organizations:

To summarise briefly on the symbiotic nature of the relationship between terrorists and the media, the recent history of terrorism in many democratic countries vividly demonstrates that terrorists do thrive on the oxygen of publicity, and it is foolish to deny this. This does not mean that the established democratic media share the values of the terrorists. It does demonstrate, however, that the free media in an open society are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation by ruthless terrorist organisations.

One notable example of the relationship between terror groups and the media was the release of the Osama bin Laden audio and video recordings. These tapes were sent directly to mainstream Arabic television networks including Al-Jazeera.

Media can often be the source of discontent for terrorist groups. Irene Kahn says,

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