The Islamic State militant group (IS) is fighting on many fronts against those seeking to defeat it. One of those fronts is a digital one.
IS puts media warfare on a par with its battle on the ground and often glorifies “media martyrs” – people who are killed while creating videos and other digital content for the group.
Like many other such groups, IS has been an enthusiastic user of social media and the web, broadcasting propaganda about its successes and using it as a recruitment tool.
Although a long-time user of social media, IS activities took a significant turn in September 2015 when the group’s official media outlets took to the messaging app Telegram. The move to the encrypted messaging service came after a long-running conflict with Twitter, which regularly shut down IS accounts, and some experimentation with less well-known platforms from which it was also expelled.
The timing was significant because that was the moment when Telegram set up the “channel” feature, letting users broadcast to an unlimited number of other users – a tool that many online jihadists were quick to exploit.
Read more at BBC.co.uk
