How The Islamic State Is Using Social Media

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On the one hand, we have the Islamic State spreading its message via social media. And, on the other hand, we have the U.S. intensifying its efforts to blunt ISIS’ message. This could get interesting.

It’s been less than a year since IS burst onto the stage, seizing large amounts of territory and shocking the world with its brutally violent tactics. During that time, the group has evolved into a highly sophisticated multimedia organization, boasting slick social media strategies that could give major corporate marketing teams a run for their money. IS knows how to package its extremist ideology in the form of well-produced videos, attractive graphics, polished magazines and strategic online posts. It’s also strikingly savvy at spreading them online, tailoring their presentation and message to media sites like Twitter, YouTube and Vine.
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All the cool kids are doing it......Countries like Africa get neglected while the so called civilized world gets touched then there is ungodly firestorm.

It's not even the Presidents fault cause he's obviously not on our side.....
 
Sarah-Palin-Africa.jpg
 
This is why the military is "losing" this war - it isn't a fight against military might. It's fighting an ideology, and why fighting back with brutality like torture is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. We need to exemplify what America represents, demonstrate why our ideas are better, not go down the low road in an unwinnable battle against a spreading religious ideology.
 
To clarify, I don't put the blame on the military at all. We, the people, and our elected leaders are using the big hammer we have, when instead we should be using soft power.
 
I recently watched the episode of South Park where Cartman goes to the future. In each of his timelines, there was some kind of war.

Got me thinking if world peace is even possible. There will always be someone, somewhere who doesn't like how someone else does something.

Now I'm watching them get served.
 
ISIS won't influence the Hard Forum as long as I'm here I'm sure some of them played first person shooters.
 
man, big deal, anybody has access to social media now and cheap phones can take decent photos and videos, it's no wonder they're doing it. There have been videos from Bin Laden 13 years ago as well. Anyone with a brain realises that they're just cowards fighting guerilla warfare from their silly huts and the majority of the population defy their "ideals". They lead by oppression and that kind of leadership always, eventually, falls be it by military might or people's revolution.

ISIS will go nowhere.
 
TwistedAegis said:
This is why the military is "losing" this war - it isn't a fight against military might. It's fighting an ideology, and why fighting back with brutality like torture is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. We need to exemplify what America represents, demonstrate why our ideas are better, not go down the low road in an unwinnable battle against a spreading religious ideology.
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So you believe the military engaged in widespread torture? What you call torture was conducted on a small group by intel agencies far removed from the battlefield. There was no attempt to manage the populous or win the war via threat of torture.


BTW, your campaign slogan was applied to the Iraq War which was won. That wan't a battle of ideology. It was a battle of making territory secure against enemies who goal was to achieve a body count to demoralize the political will of their opponents. Good thing there was no political party trying to let that play into their political advancement to give them incentive to focus on body count.

This new war with ISIS is about territory for both sides. The dynamic is different. Although they are trying to use public autrocities as a substitute for bodies.
 
No, the USA engaged in it. The individual party is irrelevant; to the world, "we" did it.

I'm not saying there is no role for the military in engaging in armed conflict, not at all. But they will never be able to "win" as bullet don't change ideologies. The USA needs to prove by its actions that its ideals are the better ones, that we have the moral high ground, etc. Engaging in torture, drone striking entire wedding parties, etc, is counter-productive.
 
My problem is that I have no doubt that ISIS can be defeated on the battlefield at least for now. It's what happens afterwords. Do we have to occupy Iraq again? Do we leave after defeating them and watch this happen over and over again. How do we come out ahead of the game without wasting lives and trillions of dollars. I don't really think anyone knows and that's the scary part.
 
I'm honestly surprised that most future-terrorists even use mainstream American social media outlets. I figured they'd just be oldschool and have booths at Muslim G2Gs (Mosques, Mecca, Public Stoning Conventions, etc).
 
Comixbooks said:
Sarah-Palin-Africa.jpg
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Obama tells business owners and entrepreneurs “If you got a business, you didn’t build that, you didn’t make it on your own”

During what Obama himself calls “2nd Great Depression” and “worst recession in 70 years” he has played over 100 rounds of golf, staged 110 fundraisers and gone on 5 vacations

Obama proved he is out of touch when he said “Sometimes I forget the magnitude of the economy”
Obama Caught telling Russian leader, “”Don’t worry, after I’m elected I will have more reliability” to disarm the United States…

Obama press secretary says, there’s no specific reason the president hasn’t met with his jobs council” after not meeting with them once in the last year!

During worst recession in 70 years President Obama said, “the private sector is doing fine”

Obama calls the British Embassy, the “English Embassy”

Obama calls Navy Corpsman (pr. core-man) “corpse-man”

Obama says there are “57 States”

Obama claimed that “America built the Intercontinental Railroad”

Obama says that he bowled a 129 and compared it to the Special Olympics

Obama said, “John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith”

On Memorial Day Obama said, “I see many of the fallen heroes in the audience here today as we celebrate Memorial Day”

In a speech in Kansas Obama that said, “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed,” –referring to a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people. Oops, a bit overstated?

Major Blunder: Obama toasts the Queen of England while the Orchestra plays the UK’s national Anthem, “God Save The Queen

Obama Signs wrong year the London’s Westminster Abbey quest book. Off by 3 years.

Obama joked, “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian” for “wheeling and dealing.” There is no Austrian language!

Obama said his “Obamacare reforms we seek would bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system.” YIKES! A major Freudian slip in all its glory!

Obama bows to world leaders :rolleyes:
 
Social media is an excellent platform for ISIS to air their legitimate grievances. Maybe they can network on Facebook and find jobs too?
 
TwistedAegis said:
This is why the military is "losing" this war - it isn't a fight against military might. It's fighting an ideology, and why fighting back with brutality like torture is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. We need to exemplify what America represents, demonstrate why our ideas are better, not go down the low road in an unwinnable battle against a spreading religious ideology.
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Look, I hate to be the guy to break this to you, but they don't care about the same things you care about and are more than willing to brutally murder (and film and publicize) everyone who they perceive as being in their way. The only way to defeat these guys is with immediate, brutal, overwhelming force. They want an apocalyptic battle - it is their most fervent desire.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Yes, you will have to stick around and mop up. Yes you may have to put out a couple of small brush fires from time to time. But if you waltz out again these jackwagons - or jackwagons just like them - will rise back up to fill the vacuum.

Sometimes folks need killing. That's the way of the world.
 
Ironically these guys seem to be more accepting and understanding of the capabilities of social media than a lot of the technical folks in places like this.
 
flashoverride said:
Look, I hate to be the guy to break this to you, but they don't care about the same things you care about and are more than willing to brutally murder (and film and publicize) everyone who they perceive as being in their way. The only way to defeat these guys is with immediate, brutal, overwhelming force. They want an apocalyptic battle - it is their most fervent desire.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Yes, you will have to stick around and mop up. Yes you may have to put out a couple of small brush fires from time to time. But if you waltz out again these jackwagons - or jackwagons just like them - will rise back up to fill the vacuum.

Sometimes folks need killing. That's the way of the world.
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I'm not denying that. But if you just keep killing without addressing the underlying ideology and issues, you're just going to keep killing. And adding credence to their hate-filled screeds about America by inflicting massive collateral damage on innocent people, and torturing people, which flies in the face of what we've said in the past, destroys our credibility and our alternative ideology we're trying to present.
 
Why read excellent pieces of well researched long-form journalism, speaking in great detail about the goals and methods of ISIS when you can just post Sarah Palin memes?

Also, Christians did it too.
 
crusty_juggler said:
Also, Christians did it too.
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I don't like to point religious fingers but there just isn't this kind of violent religious fanaticism being practiced on anywhere near this scale by any other major religion currently compared to Islam. It's just not even close. That far from makes most Muslims violent religious fanatics but it's ripping that faith apart right now.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I'm not denying that. But if you just keep killing without addressing the underlying ideology and issues, you're just going to keep killing. And adding credence to their hate-filled screeds about America by inflicting massive collateral damage on innocent people, and torturing people, which flies in the face of what we've said in the past, destroys our credibility and our alternative ideology we're trying to present.
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None of that matters.

No one around the world even thinks that stuff, at all. Maybe some western Europeans pay lip service to it when they're not busy being viciously xenophobic racists. No, when people around the world think about America, it's almost always Hollywood, cash, gangsta rap, or some other pop culture nonsense. Or various flavors of propaganda telling them that we instigate all the wars/disease/weather patterns/etc. for our own nefarious purposes.

None of what you're talking about even begins to penetrate the consciousness of the vast majority of people in this world, nor would most of them understand every day concepts we take for granted. The simple act of turning on a faucet and being able to drink the water from it is out of reach for almost half of the global population, and you're talking about abstract notions of individual liberty and equality.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't like to point religious fingers but there just isn't this kind of violent religious fanaticism being practiced on anywhere near this scale by any other major religion currently compared to Islam. It's just not even close. That far from makes most Muslims violent religious fanatics but it's ripping that faith apart right now.
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I know. I didn't include a smilie in my post that would have indicated sarcasm.

I don't like smilies.
 
flashoverride said:
None of that matters.

No one around the world even thinks that stuff, at all. Maybe some western Europeans pay lip service to it when they're not busy being viciously xenophobic racists. No, when people around the world think about America, it's almost always Hollywood, cash, gangsta rap, or some other pop culture nonsense. Or various flavors of propaganda telling them that we instigate all the wars/disease/weather patterns/etc. for our own nefarious purposes.

None of what you're talking about even begins to penetrate the consciousness of the vast majority of people in this world, nor would most of them understand every day concepts we take for granted. The simple act of turning on a faucet and being able to drink the water from it is out of reach for almost half of the global population, and you're talking about abstract notions of individual liberty and equality.
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Are you kidding me? Why do you think they sign up to die for global jihad against America and it's allies? If you don't think that matters that America tortured people or blows up wedding parties, it is you being simplistic.

And you're right, it comes down to running water. They don't trust that America's "way" can get it for them, so they sign up for jihad with ISIS. We need to demonstrate our way is better, which isn't done via the methods I've described.
 
jkerr2 said:
My problem is that I have no doubt that ISIS can be defeated on the battlefield at least for now. It's what happens afterwords. Do we have to occupy Iraq again? Do we leave after defeating them and watch this happen over and over again. How do we come out ahead of the game without wasting lives and trillions of dollars. I don't really think anyone knows and that's the scary part.
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Its called walking away and let the locals settle it. Iran, Syria, Kurds, Lebanon, and Egypt are all fighting it because it is in their natural interest to do so. We don't need to get involved.
 
OlIv0rIolI said:
We don't need to get involved.
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Unfortunately in this day and age geographical distance doesn't afford the protections it did before the Nuclear and Information ages. We can't sit back and let people this willing to kill to amass whatever resources and weapons they may until they can project that power wherever they want.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Are you kidding me? Why do you think they sign up to die for global jihad against America and it's allies?
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In order to kill apostates, build a Caliphate and bring about the end of the world.

The policies of the US, Israel, Shia nations like Iran or Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia do not matter. All are considered the enemy, not because of their politics, but because of their very existence on Earth.

A nation that enforces the laws of man instead of the laws of Muhammad is an apostate state which needs to be destroyed.
 
This war cannot end like previous wars, with a surrender, an armistice or a peace treaty. It will end when either the West is subjugated or militant Islam and its adherents are dead and destroyed—every last one of them. Once—IF—the majority of people in the West realize this, there will be bloodletting the likes of which the world has never seen.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
This war cannot end like previous wars, with a surrender, an armistice or a peace treaty. It will end when either the West is subjugated or militant Islam and its adherents are dead and destroyed—every last one of them. Once—IF—the majority of people in the West realize this, there will be bloodletting the likes of which the world has never seen.
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I'm not so sure if the West would be "subjugated" per se, but Western culture may simply become so diluted with so many Muslims moving to the West that there will be no "Western Civilization" distinction anymore to be in conflict with.

Think of it as a vacuum tank that is in natural conflict with the atmospheric pressure, but there's now a hole in the vacuum tank and soon enough there will simply be no pressure differential and everything is in equilibrium. As long as you don't care about preserving Western culture and ideology (as the left-wing multiculturalists teach us we shouldn't), then perhaps this is a good thing.
 
TwistedAegis said:
To clarify, I don't put the blame on the military at all. We, the people, and our elected leaders are using the big hammer we have, when instead we should be using soft power.
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So we should air drop flowers, jobs and fluffy bunnies over these barbarians? If this "soft power" generation was in charge of fighting the nazis we would all be speaking German.

Evil will always exist but for it to flourish good men and women must do nothing. Isis is evil and must be annihilated. Like a rabid dog it must be put down because it's too dangerous to be left alive.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
This war cannot end like previous wars, with a surrender, an armistice or a peace treaty. It will end when either the West is subjugated or militant Islam and its adherents are dead and destroyed—every last one of them. Once—IF—the majority of people in the West realize this, there will be bloodletting the likes of which the world has never seen.
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That's the issue here. Terrorism/ISIS isn't an existential threat to the US as it is made out to be. They aren't the USSR and there is no risk of Bin Laden or whoever is the newest high muckity muck rolling in to Times Square behind a tank column and bombers.

Terrorism is never going away; it's a recurring historical theme, although exacerbated by the growth in the power of weaponry. It simply needs to have the worst offenders killed, the biggest problem spots quelled, and then remove the underlying source of the angst.

I guarantee if they had ubiquitous running water, sewage systems and electricity (not to mention video games) terrorism would slow to a trickle. But currently it's extremist muslim leaders scratching the itch some people have that they perceive to be injustice, inequality, lack of opportunity. Why don't Christians do that anymore (for the most part)? Because they now live in countries that don't have those issues.
 
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