Instead, last autumn the administration launched with great fanfare, but seemingly little study, a social media offensive against ISIS and al-Qaeda aimed at ridiculing the militants’ sophisticated messaging with blunt sarcasm. The news of the initiative made headlines — as it was meant to in a crafted PR offensive by administration aides—but doubts have persisted since about the effectiveness of the offensive and whether the State Department is the right messenger.
Part of the problem, say critics, is there appears to be no one in charge and a variety of agencies, from the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as private contractors are mounting their different fight-backs with little coordination and few blueprints.
“They are monitoring suspicious websites and social media, cyber-attacking others, and planting bogus information,” says Gabriel Weimann, professor of communication at Israel’s Haifa University. “The virtual war between terrorists and counterterrorism forces and agencies is vital, dynamic, and ferocious,” he adds in a report for the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Ferocious it might be but Western online counter-radicalization efforts to date, say critics, are amateurish, lack a clear understanding of the mentality of the jihadi propagandists and their potential recruits, and are unclear about objectives, how to reach them, or even how to evaluate success. Ferocious is no substitute for viral on the Internet: the kind of contagious enthusiasm, horrifying though it may be, that infects much of the jihadist discourse.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member