The Islamic State group’s Twitter traffic has plunged 45 percent in the past two years, the Obama administration says, as the U.S. and its allies have countered messages of jihadi glorification with a flood of online images and statements about suffering and enslavement at the hands of the extremist organization.
Among the images: A teddy bear with Arabic writing and messages saying IS “slaughters childhood,” “kills innocence,” “lashes purity” or “humiliates children.”
U.S. officials cite the drop in Twitter traffic as a sign of progress toward eliminating propaganda they blame for inspiring attacks around the world.
Data obtained by the Associated Press show a 6-1 ratio of anti-ISIS content online compared with pro-ISIS content – an improvement from last year. When pro-ISIS Twitter accounts are discovered today, they have about 300 followers each. In 2014, such accounts had 1,500 followers each, according to the data.
Among social networks, the administration has primarily focused on Twitter. The platform has been most heavily used by ISIS to crowdsource supporters and potential attackers, though it also has used YouTube and Facebook.
As ISIS emerged from al-Qaida’s shadow and began seizing cities and large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2013, pro-ISIS accounts started firing out tens of thousands of tweets each day, rapidly and repeatedly opening new accounts as others were suspended.
The group’s enhanced use of social media quickly set it apart from al-Qaida and previous jihadi militant groups. Counterterrorism and law enforcement officials have pointed to ISIS’s online presence for inspiring deadly attacks in Europe and the United States.
The U.S. messages attempt to undermine many of ISIS’s most oft-cited claims. These include the group’s supposed invincibility on the battlefield or that its caliphate is good for Muslims. American partners have flooded social media with messages highlighting the group’s territorial loses and inability to effectively govern or provide basic services to areas under its control.
Although the U.S. government has no formal arrangement with Twitter, its information campaign has dovetailed with new approaches by the company to identify and eliminate tweets supporting terrorism. Twitter announced earlier this year it was using a spam-fighting technology as well.
Since mid-2015, the company has suspended more than 125,000 such accounts.
Officials accept that the focus on Twitter may be driving some of ISIS’s traffic to secure message platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
The Global Engagement Center was created in March to replace a previous State Department entity for fighting ISIS messaging, the widely criticized Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. In addition to shifting to Arabic content and proxy messengers, the new formation harmonizes the online campaign with military and intelligence efforts, and uses data analytics from the private and public sector to gauge IS’ changing online tactics and what counterstrategies are working best.