“US authorities are now pursuing 900 terrorism-related investigations in all 50 USA states”, said Lorenzo Vidino, one of the study’s principal authors. Most ISIS supporters in the USA are radicalized online, but many also discuss their interest in ISIS with others in person, the study found.
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USA authorities this year have arrested almost five dozen people in the United States for helping to support or plot with the Islamic State, according to a new study, the largest number of terrorism-related arrests in the country in a single year since September 2001.
Seventy-one Americans have been arrested for ISIS-related activities since March 2014, and they come from varied backgrounds and ethnicities and identify broad motivations for supporting ISIS, according to a new report from the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
About 40% of them were converts to Islam, according to the researchers. “It’s a growing and disturbing phenomenon”. “The individuals involved range from hardened militants to teenage girls, petty criminals and college students”. But suspending accounts doesn’t stop the spread of messages: Others users, known as “amplifiers”, simply retweet material, and some, known as “shout-outs”, promote the newly created accounts of suspended users.
“Several thousand Americans consume ISIS propaganda online creating what has been described as a ‘radicalization echo chamber'”.
Twitter is the “platform of selection” most generally utilized by the lively core of American supporters of Islamic State, it stated.
The last of these was cited in one particular case study, which found that an ISIS-related U.S. Twitter account was using a picture of the Detroit Lions NFL team as an avatar.
The Internet isn’t always the main point of contact, the researchers say.
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SEAMUS HUGHES: The youngest individual was a 15-year-old from Pennsylvania, and the oldest was a 47-year-old former Air Force officer. 86% are men. Most of the defendants were organizing themselves in small cells, often with the help of social media, to go overseas or attack targets in the U.S. “The bar for Americans to join these terrorist organizations has been lowered, allowing a level of connectivity and interaction with recruiters and propagandists unheard of just a few years ago”. The report suggests that the USA should give more consideration to ratcheting up its own publicity campaign, for instance by highlighting the stories of those who have become disillusioned with the group. Recognizing this complexity is a vital initial step for policymakers, law enforcement officials, civic leaders, teachers, and parents when crafting effective solutions.
