On June 10, the Obama administration announced that the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has made significant progress in countering the terrorist group online.
Less than 48 hours later, a mass murderer who radicalized himself online and swore allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
“Their media propaganda is not what it was before — they had kind of [an] open season back in 2014,” Brett McGurk, President Obama’s special envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition, told White House reporters June 10.
“We’ve worked very closely throughout the global coalition to make sure that we get this stuff off Twitter, off Facebook, off YouTube. We work very closely with Facebook and Twitter. Twitter has taken down about [125,000] pro-ISIL handles. For every one on Twitter now there’s about six counter-ISIL handles,” he said, using the administration’s preferred acronym for the Sunni-led terrorist organization.
Days later, federal investigators revealed that Omar Mateen swore fealty to the Islamic State and became a terrorist after finding pro-Islamic extremist propaganda online.
“It appears that the shooter was inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet,” Obama confirmed after his first meeting with FBI Director James Comey about the investigation.
“It’s undeniable that we’ve made important progress in countering their efforts online,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on June 13, reaffirming McGurk’s update the day after Mateen killed 49 people.
Tara Maller, spokeswoman for the Counter Extremism Project, said governments have taken strides toward thwarting the Islamic State’s social media campaign, but the online war is far from won.
“The general opinion is there is a lot of work to be done,” said Maller, a former CIA analyst.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the like have all cooperated with the government’s efforts but could do more, she said. For example, plenty of content violating the platforms’ terms of service still gets posted.
“I don’t think the government is to blame … but the more that this gruesome content is able to reach people, the graphic content in violation of terms of service that is likely reaching people and influencing them, the more that needs to be done,” Maller said.
The solution is collaboration among government, tech companies and nonprofits such as hers, Maller said.
The White House has reached out to Silicon Valley for assistance. This happened most recently in January, when Obama dispatched Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Comey to San Jose, Calif., to seek additional cooperation and brainstorm ways to block the Islamic State’s and other radical groups’ online presence.
“Suspensions have a measurable effect in suppressing the activity of ISIS networks on Twitter,” George Washington University’s J.M. Berger wrote in a recent white paper titled, “The Islamic State’s Diminishing Returns on Twitter.”
He continued: “Occasional large-scale suspensions, such as we saw after the Paris attacks, have dramatically reduced the size of ISIS’ presence on social media and a lower level of routine suspensions hold the network flat in between these events.”
State Department Undersecretary Richard Stengel boasted in London in January: “Kim Kardashian is retweeted more in three days than ISIL has done on social media since they were created.”
Despite such gains, the administration concedes that it’s impossible to keep the Islamic State off of social media completely.
“But they’re still disseminating information, and there are still places where a variety of extremist organizations are seeking to propagate their radical ideology,” Earnest said.
And the group seizes on lone-wolf attacks such as Mateen’s to brag about its propaganda’s success and promote these loners’ mayhem through social media.
The group now has a formula for grabbing headlines after individuals previously unknown to them go on a rampage.
The terrorist network uses its official Amaq News Agency to claim credit for inspiring the attack. Then it relies on supportive social media accounts to disseminate its “victory” all the while reminding the world that it has called on “followers” to launch such self-contained assaults.
Not long ago, the consensus was that the administration’s counter social media efforts were floundering and that the Islamic State was winning the online battle.
As recently as December, an expert panel convened by the administration reported that the State Department-led effort, however well-intentioned, was not up to the task.
Will McCants, an Islamic State expert at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post then that the government’s anti-Islamic State propaganda machine was “in disarray.”
The administration took a major criticism to heart — that the U.S. government isn’t the right messenger.
Britain, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates are engaging in “constant, 24/7 counter-messaging,” McGurk said in his briefing. “And a huge role there, of course, with our partners in the Gulf; because there is a religious dimension to this that obviously we can’t be the leaders on.”
If the criticism is right, the answer, much like the problem, could come from overseas.
