Islamic State: most searched terror group on the web
Extremist group the Islamic State may claim ancient roots, but its barbaric actions and propaganda machine have made it the most searched for and tweeted about terror group on the modern web.
Islamic State (IS), also known as Isis/Isil, has this summer become the most searched for terror group on the internet, far outstripping al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Isis and Islamic State keywords are also being tweeted as much as ten times more than tweets about al-Qaeda and the Taliban, indicating how quickly the group is rising on social media in spite of firms like Twitter deleting accounts that share extreme content.
The release of a video purporting to show the murder of US journalist James Foley by IS yesterday, and the speed with which the video and news of his murder spread around the world, indicates how effective IS has become at sharing propaganda on social media.
According to Google Trends, which monitors search trends on a scale of 1-100, IS has hit the 100 mark in the latest search data for August. It hit this figure for both the entire world’s searches and for UK searches, indicating how people across the globe are interested in the group.
Read more: #jihad - how Isis is using social media to find support
Google says on its site: “Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart. If at most 10 per cent of searches for the given region and time frame were for “pizza,” we’d consider this 100. This doesn’t convey absolute search volume.”
At its peak in 2005, al-Qaeda only ranked 25 on the scale of 1-100, indicating that, worldwide, people are more eager for information about Islamic State.
When using Islamic State keywords, users search on Google are looking for information on: “Pakistan Islamic State”, “Islamic State news”, and “Iraq Islamic State”.
The users most commonly searching for Islamic State information are from Pakistan and Nigeria, where al-Qaeda affiliate organisations are located.
You can explore the data here, with the worldwide and UK search charts below.
IS on Twitter
Analysis by Channel 4 News of tweets using keywords of terror groups shows how Islamic State and Isis tweets are outstripping al-Qaeda and the Taliban by a factor of four, despite only coming to prominence during the Syrian civil war and in Iraq in recent months.
In total, there were 250,000 tweets about al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the past month, compared to half a million tweets about Islamic State. When you include the keyword Isis, which may include terms not linked to the terror group, the number of tweets rises to 3.5 million, far outstripping other terror groups by a factor of ten to one. This may be due to the recent ramping up of activity from Is in comparison to other groups.
Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo this morning tweeted in response to the beheading video: “We have been and are actively suspending accounts as we discover them related to this graphic imagery.”
YouTube has also been rapidly removing videos showing graphic images, making it difficult to obtain accurate information about how many times Islamic State execution and propaganda videos are being viewed and shared.
IS accounts have posted altered pictures of Michelle Obama to show her holding a “#bringbackourhumvee” sign, in reference to a stolen American military vehicle, instead of the original image which read “#bringbackourgirls” in reference to the abducted Nigerian school children.
Organised network
A study conducted by SITE intelligence group found that the way that IS handles and releases information shows a marked change from al-Qaeda techniques, leading to more tweets being seen by more people.
“IS maintains an organised and well-coordinated online network with more than a dozen official accounts on Twitter for its central leadership,” says Rita Katz of SITE.
“Some of these pages are used to release messages from the group’s leadership, and others are focused on recruitment, intimidation, and networking – gaining tens of thousands of followers.
“Geared to win the hearts and minds of Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria, ISIS also maintains several official local pages, focusing on the group’s activities in various provinces.”
Even al-Qaeda has been reported to have warned jihadis in the past of the potency of ‘extreme sharia’ videos that show executions, writing in a memo that such videos could turn a local populace and wider audience against them.
Al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader Ayman al-Zawahiri specifically warned Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian man who led the group that murdered Nick Berg and Ken Bigley, in a memo that beheadings had to stop as they were bad PR for al-Qaeda.
“Use a bullet instead,” the memo reportedly read.