Abstract

Social media has become increasingly popular as a tool to recruit and radicalise individuals in a progressively connected world through the accessibility of internet capable devices. This paper aims to discuss the ubiquity of social media, its usage by the general populace and organisations, social incidents propelled by social media’s influence and recommendations to combat further harmful use of social media platforms. Content covered in the paper engages with the online networks and social media stream, discussing themes including social media membership, the influence of social media on individuals and social change through social media.

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The social media platforms of today help users connect with and share themselves online for new opportunities, and at the same time, welcome those who feel disenchanted with society. The online communities created on these platforms form a safe haven for users to connect with like-minded individuals, forming friendships and building numbers to advance their beliefs (Garimella et al., 2018). The power and reach of social media have made it into an effective tool in radicalising and recruiting members for a cause. It is an ever-present technology that entices users with the promise of friendship and belonging, and for over 200 million users, social media has become an addiction (Longstreet & Brooks, 2017). With barely any of the fact-checking expected of mainstream media outlets, social media remains almost completely unregulated, becoming the perfect medium for users with agendas to disseminate their beliefs. As countless articles are shared every day on social media platforms promoting political causes and social change, some find themselves led down the radical path.

Technological advances in the last few decades have greatly changed the way people communicate. It started with email in the late 1990s, a ground-breaking method of communication connecting users around the world almost instantly. Now, it is social media’s turn; people of all ages have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on their computers, tablets and smartphones. Facebook has become the most popular social media platform since its inception in 2004, connecting 2.8 billion users worldwide (Tankovska, 2021). It is also one of the most downloaded applications on smartphones with 4.6 billion downloads over 10 years (Meisenzahl, 2021). Twitter, the microblogging site, allows individuals and organisations to immediately send and reply to short messages to millions of followers. Breaking news is regularly tweeted by news outlets, turning it into a major source of information for many people. YouTube, an online video-sharing platform, receives 500 hours of video every minute from its users (Tankovska, 2021). Users upload various content including tv show clips, short films, video blogs and opinion pieces. Mobile social media applications create addictive content-seeking behaviour (Apaolaza et al., 2019), encouraging users to create and share information that should normally be kept private. People can connect and share content almost anywhere at any time, the only restriction being an active internet connection. Social media presents a deluge of information available at the user’s convenience, a quick search is all that is needed for an instantaneous answer. However, the integrity of the answer is up to the requestor to decide.

Disreputable individuals and organisations fully understand the power and reach of social media, billions of users rely on social media every day to share and communicate. It has become the perfect tool in manipulating the grievances of disillusioned individuals, radicalising them, and recruiting them for a cause. The concept of radicalisation on social media has received substantial global attention due to extensive news coverage of the 2021 US Capitol siege, however, this is not a new phenomenon. Terrorist organisations such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda have been recruiting individuals online through propaganda and partisan information for many years. ISIS alone has recruited an estimated 40,000 foreign nationals from over 100 countries through their strategic use of social media (“IS foreign fighters: 5,600 have returned home – report”, 2017), greatly bolstering their forces when the group was most active. Al-Qaeda used social media platforms to disseminate online propaganda to recruit and call on extremists to carry out attacks on Western countries (Terban, 2018). The brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 were inspired by propaganda and learned how to craft explosives from magazines supporting mass-casualty attacks (Cooper et al., 2013). The bombings and aggression influenced by these deadly organisations demonstrate the threat posed by the presently unregulated social media platforms. The power and reach of social media as a tool for advancing terrorist agendas should not be understated.

Riots and revolutions are not new, and social media does not directly cause them. However, studies show there is a clear correlation between social media and the intensity and momentum of a movement (Jost et al., 2018) (Tufekci & Wilson, 2012). The power of mass communication, when used for social change, is not ground-breaking news. The ability to propagate select information to countless observers is extremely influential, no matter how impartial the content may seem. Before social media, individuals were limited by their number of connections to people around them. Most would have their family, friends, and co-workers, nowhere near the average number of 338 Facebook friends (Smith, 2014) and 707 Twitter followers people have today (Smith, 2020). With the ease of connecting so many individuals quickly, social media accelerates a movement by rapidly proliferating beliefs among like-minded persons. Social media does not require a user to be popular or well-known, any average person with a meaningful message or cause can send it to a well-known individual with a large number of followers, which may then be forwarded repeatedly until it garners the attention of millions of people around the world. Instead of the idea of six degrees of separation from people around the globe, social media has reduced it to just one or two degrees. As sides of a dispute are formed, users tend to develop a sense of camaraderie with empathetic community moderators and members, viewing them as sociable cohorts similarly disillusioned with society (Quattrociocchi et al., 2016). Radical groups take advantage of the seemingly close connections on social media to spread their influence, communicate with supporters and raise capital (Behr et al., 2013). Donations can be made anonymously via sites like Facebook to fund the cause. Discourse on highly partisan forums become especially useful to draw in individuals for recruitment and radicalisation (Behr et al., 2013).

The process of inciting a movement on social media is fairly straightforward. A conspiracy theory is posted on a social media platform and swiftly spreads online. Users discuss the topic and provide their own partisan opinions. Information is shared back and forth, occasionally with embellishments added at each iteration. With so many articles and opinions discussing an issue and no time to process them, people’s cognitive biases tend to take over, instead of taking an object view, human minds adjust the understanding of new information so that it aligns with what they already believe (Shin et al., 2018). Ideas are exchanged rapidly in community-based echo chambers and groupthink is a powerful force. Individuals wittingly or unwittingly become radicalised and suggest dangerous actions to express their dissent. One thing leads to another and a serious incident is instigated.

The 2021 storming of the United States Capitol happened in a similar fashion. Former President Donald Trump made false claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him. Repeated claims of voter fraud by Trump and other Republican politicians provoked incessant attention on social media platforms. Misinformation disseminated rapidly in conservative-leaning communities with few fact-checkers in place to identify false claims. When Trump later tweeted on December 19th “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”, the planned riot gained further momentum. Rioters openly planned the event on social media (Hamilton, 2021), calling for violence against congress and former vice-president Mike Pence. Users discussed how to avoid law enforcement, which tools to bring to break open doors and how to smuggle weapons into the building (Frenkel, 2021). Much of the planning and discussions were done publicly, easily accessible, with little moderation from social media platforms. Even during the siege, rioters were using social media to post photos, livestream and share evidence of their involvement. While the incident could have been arranged using a different medium, it would not have reached nearly as many people or have had the momentum it received from social media.

Senior leaders need to familiarise themselves with how technology is being exploited or allow cybersecurity experts to have more influence in the writing of policies. Up until now, proper understanding of social media and cybersecurity has been a major issue for lawmakers. During the 2018 Facebook hearing that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, participated in, US representatives asked Zuckerberg numerous comical questions (Zetlin, 2018). Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley asked “Mr. Zuckerberg… Hypothetically, if someone’s VCR won’t stop flashing 12:00, how would you suggest they fix that?” and “Mr. Zuckerberg, a magazine I recently opened came with a floppy disk offering me 30 free hours of something called America On-Line. Is that the same as Facebook?”. Western Virginia senator Shelly Moore Capito asked “Would you bring some fibre, because we don’t have connectivity?”. Utah senator Orrin Hatch asked “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?” which greatly surprised Zuckerberg until he answered “Senator, we run ads.” The questions asked during the congressional hearing show a clear lack of understanding representatives had in technology altogether, yet they are the ones who decide on how to regulate social media. Even the more recent and better handled 2020 questioning of tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google produced little results (Lohrmann, 2020). The hearing lasted for nearly six hours with lawmakers armed with millions of documents showing the tech sector had too much power, disregarding user privacy, threatening rivals and even democracy itself. In the end, no meaningful regulations were created, paving the way for the 2021 Capitol riot (Lohrmann, 2020).

The aftermath of the 2021 Capitol riots also brought few changes. Major social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube banned Donald Trump’s from their platform permanently (Dzhanova, 2021). They also started suspending or banning accounts that were used to spread misinformation or aid conspiracy theories that led to the siege (Dzhanova, 2021). However, the damage had already been done, over a hundred people were injured and five people died. User accounts that were closed on one social media platform could easily be reopened under a different name, or on an entirely different platform altogether, far-right platforms such as Gab welcomed new online refugees with open arms (Andrews, 2021). None of the actions taken by social media platforms so far would prevent another insurrection from happening.

The rapid changes in technology call for updated legislation to be put into place faster and more frequently. Internet usage has seen exponential growth since the late 1990s but there are few guidelines in place for tech corporations (Elghawaby, 2018). If governments around the world do not implement legislation more efficiently to combat problems, it will become a never-ending cycle of addressing old problems to only find newer and more relevant problems emerge. Unfamiliarity and carelessness by senior leaders are not valid excuses. Officials need to spend the time to learn the nuances of social media and its influence on radicalisation. There is no reason to treat this any differently than a tangible extremist cell. Appropriate training for government representatives, intelligence services and law enforcement on dealing with technological threats should be a requirement in this day and age. 

The world is becoming increasingly connected and social media is not a temporary infatuation. Even groups in less-connected countries have leveraged the power of social media for political and social change (Lim, 2012). Furthering their causes by manipulating elections, triggering military coups, coordinating riots, directing terrorist attacks. Until significant changes are made, disreputable organisations that understand the intricacies of social media will continue to use it effectively to recruit and radicalise individuals.

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