Resistance Against ISIS by Twitter
ISIS, an unrecognised Islamic-wannabe-claiming government, took a lot of attention in the past few years in the news market, social media reaching our class discussions. The media, by focusing on ISIS and making it a newsworthy topic, empowered it. Every action taken by ISIS was being published and shared on social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. However, the beheading video of the American journalist, James Floy, was a turning point on Twitter. After the incident happened tweeters discussed it heavenly and the violent video was being shared repetitively. Twitter administration then removed all the published videos as an act of sympathy to the Family of the beheaded. Regardless of Twitters intentions towards the removal of the video, I view such act as right for several reasons.
First, as mentioned on Twitters official website, under “Content Boundaries and Use of Twitter” category, “You may not use pornographic or excessively violent media in your profile image or header image. Twitter may allow some forms of graphic content in Tweets marked as sensitive media. When content crosses the line into gratuitous images of death, Twitter may ask that you remove the content out of respect for the deceased.” Users who shared the beheading video broke this policy for they shared a violent act done by a member of ISIS, which according to Dave Brat, a United States Congressman is ranked as number 1 in “Top 10 Most Dangerous Terrorist Groups” list. Thus, twitter had all the right to remove the beheading video.
Second, the video is harsh and could cause psychological damage to children and adults. According to a Post-traumatic stress disorder specialists declare that even watching violent videos limitedly might cause psychological costs (Wride, 2014). Again, twitter did the right thing by removing the beheading video and lessened the psychological costs of violence.
Lastly, according to Dr. Silver, research team member of studying the effects of viewing repeated news footage of terrorist incidents believes in no psychological aim or benefits in watching beheading videos to an individual but “feeds into the terrorists’ hands.” (as cited in Wride, 2014). One of ISIS’s powerful weapons is social media. Through social media ISIS became popular, international and powerful.
“From its start, social media has been integral to ISIS’s rise. It enables ISIS militants to raise its prestige among terror groups, and overtake older jihadist competitors like al-Qaeda. It serves to coordinate troops and win battles. And it allows the group to administer the territory under its control.” (Singer and Brooking, Terror and Twitter, 2015)
“Now ISIS is using social media to expand its war far beyond its borders. What started with the choreographed execution video of James Foley, blasted across the Web through an army of dummy Twitter accounts, has now morphed into something more devious and distributed” (Singer and Brooking, 2015)
What twitter did was not only an act of sympathy towards the family and friends of James Foley but also an act of ethics. Terrorism in all countries, cultures, ideologies, religions, systems, etc is condemned because its unnatural for human beings to act violently. Moreover, its what differentiates us from other beings.
Sources
(n.d.). Retrieved from Twitter: https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311
Brat, D. (2016, July 15). Retrieved from United States House of Representatives: https://brat.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=227
P.W. Singer, E. B. (2015, December 11). Terror on Twitter. Retrieved from http://www.popsci.com/terror-on-twitter-how-isis-is-taking-war-to-social-media
Wride, N. (2014, September 15). Trauma Expert: ‘Do Not Watch’ Beheading Videos. Retrieved from Elements Behavioral Health: https://www.elementsbehavioralhealth.com/culture-media/do-not-watch-beheading-videos/
