The Strategic Use Of Social Media By Terrorist Networks – OpEd
Terrorist networks have increasingly leveraged social media platforms as powerful tools for advancing their agendas. These digital spaces allow for rapid dissemination of content, enabling groups to craft narratives that distort realities, amplify grievances, and cultivate support. By spreading misinformation campaigns, such organizations often seek to portray themselves as victims or defenders of a cause, thereby gaining international sympathy. At the same time, their propaganda frequently overlooks or downplays the violence they inflict on local communities, focusing instead on external adversaries. This approach not only recruits new members but also sows division and confusion globally.
The misinformation tactics used by the terrorists are advanced to influence the minds of the citizens. These are the creation and amplification of fake stories by using bots, fake accounts, and organized campaigns. An example can be given that disinformation is frequently emotionally charged information intended to elicit a response, such as fear, anger, or surprise, which is easier to transmit than factual information. Studies have shown that fake news on websites such as Twitter (now X) spread six times quicker than the truth and reaches a lot more people as it is new and emotional.
An illustrative case is the Islamic State (ISIS) that at its peak created high-quality multimedia propaganda to put across a message of power and unstoppable nature. ISIS used social media to post videos, pictures and texts that exaggerated their activities and misrepresented their enemies. In 2014, observers estimated that the followers of ISIS were running at least 46,000 Twitter accounts, which they used to coordinate a flood of posts on important events. Such stories enhanced the stories that portrayed ISIS as liberators, which disregarded the brutal methods used by the group on civilians.
Social media has been used by separatist terrorist organizations like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) to disseminate disinformation in places such as Balochistan with alleged foreign support of India. These organizations use counterfeit accounts and networks to advance anti-state messages, misrepresent the historical truth and present their violent activities as rightful opposition. Investigations have shown that there are organized operations of fake profiles that spread propaganda, such as fake statements and fake news to attract support among international audiences. These are tactics of larger campaigns as terrorist networks use digital platforms to spread grievances without revealing their contribution to local instability.
In the same manner, Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State in Somalia (ISS) have also used Facebook to propagate extremism ideology in their local languages by posing as legitimate media outlets in Africa. These attempts encompass disinformation campaigns which steal discourse, and distribution via Telegram channels which are not moderated. In a report published in 2024, it was pointed out that the number of disinformation campaigns has nearly increased four times on the continent since 2022, with militant Islamist groups in West Africa using closed networks to recruit and disseminate messages. In the world, there have been recorded organized social media misinformation campaigns in at least 81 countries and every year, the number of state-sponsored and individual campaigns has been on the rise.
These tactics have been further improved by the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). Misinformation is more believable and scalable with the help of generative AI as groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates have used these technologies to generate posters, translating propaganda, and deepfakes. In times of war, like in Gaza, AI-generated images of alleged victims have been shared to increase emotional appeal and create anarchy.
One of the main goals of such campaigns is to attract the international sympathy through the depiction of terrorist networks as the oppressed groups struggling against unjust systems. This entails manipulation of facts to highlight the perceived injustices and down play the culpability of the group. As an illustration, Russian-associated disinformation campaigns in Syria were directed against the White Helmets, a humanitarian group, and branded them as the terrorists who had connections with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. These have been reinforced by bots and trolls and reached 56 million people on Twitter during the most important news events in 2016 and 2017. By portraying rescuers as threats, the narratives undermined their efforts and gave reason to attack them, which eventually led to the killing of more than 210 White Helmet volunteers since 2013.
In Balochistan, such terrorist organizations as the BLA have used social media to create a narrative that would gain international sympathy by positioning their actions as a rights movement, which in many cases are supposedly supported by India through disinformation networks. These attempts are accompanied by organized online campaigns to disseminate false information, including fake news and propaganda to make the groups perceived as the victims of oppression and seek international support. It has been reported that these types of networks engage hundreds of fake outlets and accounts that amplify these selective stories to sway the opinion of the world.
During the 2016 U.S. election cycle, disinformation spread with fake stories, including those about Hillary Clinton and ISIS, created 8.7 million engagements, more than top stories of major news sources. Facebook had estimated that 126 million of its users viewed Russian-promoted material, and Twitter had found 2,752 accounts linked to Russia that tweeted 1.4 million times. These attempts capitalized on social differences to create an empathy towards other accounts, which in most cases were in line with extremist agendas.
Platforms have also been used to recruit extremists who 65% of the extremists used Facebook between 2005 and 2016 to spread views and action. This number increased to 87% in 2016, which demonstrates the transition to digital propaganda that portrays violence as the righteous resistance. Al-Shabaab has been innovative in East Africa by establishing pseudo media pages to spread ideology to attract followers with customized content that appeals to the world.
One of the most notable aspects of terrorist propaganda is the selective absence of the damage to local people. Tales tend to attract attention to outer enemies and paint the group as the guardians, thus dismissing the atrocities perpetrated against the civilians in their areas of operation. In the case of ISIS, propaganda focused on conquests and caliphate-building, although it seldom discussed the mass displacement, mass executions and enslavement of local populations in Iraq and Syria. Rather, content idolized fighters and recruited by assuring empowerment, pushing internal violence stories to the back.
In Baluchistan, terrorist organizations such as the BLA and the BLF, which have been reported to have Indian support, spread messages on social media which glorify their assaults and minimize the effects on local citizens. These networks disseminate false information through platforms without regard to the death and disruption they caused to communities and instead rely on external accounts to sustain sympathy. As an example, assaults on infrastructure and human lives are promoted as heroic, and the damage to the local economies and lives is not included in their online campaigns.
In Africa, where Russia funds 80 disinformation campaigns against more than 22 countries, the stories reinforce anti-Western moods at the expense of local destruction through allied militant forces. In Nigeria, militant Islamists recruit via communal violence they fuel, but use Telegram to disseminate messages in local languages, which make them appear as the protectors against foreign influences.
This selective framing is evident in hashtag campaigns and AI-generated content, where groups like ISIS produce materials that highlight "victories" without acknowledging civilian casualties. A Mercy Corps report notes how disinformation in Syria portrayed humanitarian actors as threats, leading to targeted violence while ignoring the broader human cost. Such tactics not only distort facts but also erode trust in factual reporting, allowing networks to maintain sympathy abroad.