CHAPTER 1
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
This paper focuses on the impact social media has in modern information-age warfare. “The adaptation of social media as a tool of modern warfare should not be surprising” (Jarred, 2017) as internet technology has evolved impressively in the last two decades. Therefore, it was predictable the social media at some point could have played a significant role in contemporary society, meeting the needs of modern conflicts. After all, it is an inexpensive ‘weapon’ which for his nature is accessible to everyone, almost everywhere. Everyone could create a brand bolstering his message all over the world. Nonstate actors can build influence operations as state actors do as they may access to the same tools.
This study explores how a nonstate actor such as Daesh has hit the headlines and influence modern warfare remarkably. Daesh made use of the social platform in a way which either a nonstate nor a state actor has never done before. In a few months, it impressed the world, convincing everyone that “war will never be the same again” (Patrikarakos, 2017, p.202).
Furthermore, it is worth to understand the rationale behind the Daesh precipitous rise to power within an online social environment using a theoretical framework. The Social Cognitive Theory as human functioning is “explained in terms of triadic reciprocity in which behaviour, cognitive and other personal factors, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants of each other,” (Bandura, 1986, p. 18). Moreover, in his Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication, Bandura advocates that individuals are also used to acquiring behaviour by observing a model in the mass media ecosystem (2001).
This paper will adopt an empirical research method through the Daesh case study, which allows the reader to understand how a nonstate actor could ‘weaponise’ social media, affecting the modern information-age conflicts.
1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEM AND OBJECTIVES
Systematic and effective use of social media is not new to terroristic groups such as Daesh and its progenitor Al-Qaeda as they had always been “technologically savvy” (Patrikarakos, 2017 p.206). The Internet has always been a multifaceted tool as it is accessible, it could be used anonymously and for overt means. Therefore, it is important to understand the rationale behind his use. Thus, the research question is:
“How social media has been used as a weapon in modern warfare by non-state actors such as Daesh (and its progenitor Al-Qaeda)?”
In order to answer to the above problem, this paper will focus on the following objectives:
a) To understand how social media is a multi-purpose tool in modern warfare,
b) To look at the Daesh Social Media Strategy,
c) To appreciate the contribution of Daesh’s ‘millennials fighters’ on weaponizing social media.
1.3 DAESH VS ISLAMIC STATE: NAME MATTERS.
The West has never had a coherent strategy to fight it, and it has even known how to call it. Choosing a proper name, it is not a superfluous aspect: chose how to name things is the first step in understanding them. The dispute, in this case, is between calling it the Islamic State or Daesh.
The Islamic State (it also applies to the Is, Isis, Isil variants) refers to a State in all respects, as at least it claims to be the one led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi until October 2019 and now by his successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. The so-called Isis was once an Iraqi section of Al-Qaeda, which later became the Islamic State in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and, finally, proclaimed itself an Islamic State. The flattening of the name down to the pure Islamic State is simply an attempt to remove geographical peculiarities, providing only one State entity. Just think that another way to indicate the Islamic State is al-Dawla, literally 'The State'.
Actually, this state has no real homogeneous borders, nor a united territory. Not surprisingly, the names before the self-proclamation wanted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014 include specific geographical areas, such as Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Arabic term for Greater Syria) or as that Isil in which the 'L' stands for Levante, that is potentially also the territories of Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon.
The more real a group is seen to be, the more dominant its status becomes inside its institutional environment (Parsons, 1951); accordingly, President Obama argued, “ISIL is not Islamic . . . and [is] certainly not a state” as the way we talk about things changes how we perceive them. (Khan, 2014). Thus, the author of this paper prefers to use the term Daesh instead of Islamic State (in all of its variants).
1.4 PAPER FRAMEWORK
The paper will be divided into three chapters that will guide the reader towards the conclusion. Chapter 1 introduces the framework of the paper, going through his background and the research problem with the related objectives. Furthermore, it explains the reason why the use of name Daesh is preferable to other names of the terroristic group such as Islamic State (IS), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). Chapter 2 aims to examine the literature review associated with the spreading of social media, the Social Cognitive Theory and the social media weapon behind the rise to the power of Daesh. Moreover, it will review the literature on contemporary information-age warfare. Chapter 3…
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Social media has always been considered a new topic and the research on his effect is increasing as it appears to be a living issue. In the recent past, it has affected the information-age warfare as nonstate actors such as Daesh massively uses social media. Despite the spreading of social media, the existing literature is insufficient to cover all its nuances, which advice the importance of a different-perspective examination. The first part of this chapter covers social media as a whole, providing an understanding of what it is; after that, the author reviews the relevant literature by providing an overview of Daesh use of social media. The third part aims at examining the theoretical framework behind the phenomenon through the lens of mass communication and Social Cognitive Theory. The fourth part will focus on modern conflicts, where information is becoming increasingly influential. This literature review will lead to the conclusions of the chapter where the author will state the reason for this study.
2.2 DEFINING SOCIAL MEDIA
To understand what are the potentials of social media, to comprehend their limits and to appreciate how to get the most of them, we need to unfold what is behind these two words. One of the biggest mistakes that a citizen, a company, a brand can make is to leap into social media environment and to use them with no real clue of how they work and how to protect themselves against them. With this in mind, it will indeed be appropriate to answer these questions first: how we can define social media? Do social media have the same meaning all over the world? This will make us understand what was wrongly regarded as familiar from its creation to the present day, highlighting its changed attitude in a different environment. Before diving into the intriguing world of social media, we need to understand when they were born. An apparently easy issue. However, the answers are not unique and do not all agree.
“Social media is fast becoming a term that means everything to everyone, and thus does not really mean anything anymore” (Gupta and Brooks 2013, p.17). First and foremost, when dealing with this concept one has to draw a line to two associated concepts which are often linked with it: Web 2.0 and User Generated Content (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010, p.60). The main idea behind Web 1.0 was to give the users the possibility to visualise static hyperlinks. In fact, according to Cormode and Krishnamurthy, “content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content.” (2008, p.2). On the other hand, there is the Web 2.0, a term which is closely associated with it thanks to O'Reilly Media's Web 2.0 conference at the end of 2004. Technology-wise, it is completely equivalent to Web 1.0, as the network-level infrastructure continues to consist of TCP/IP and HTTP (to add a note) and hypertext is still the basic concept of the relations between the contents. The difference, more than anything else, lies in the contents, which are generated dynamically and the resulting users’ approach to the Web, which fundamentally passes by simple consultation the possibility of contributing to populate and nourish the Web with own contents.
The internet has increasingly been the digital structure in which User Generated Content has grown, “empower[ing] users to develop, create, rate, and distribute Internet content and applications” (O'Reilly 2005). This means “the Web is evolving from a business-to-consumer marketing media to one where peer-to-peer generation and sharing of data are the norms” (O’Connor 2008). The role each user can play into the web is getting much more crucial. Everyone is a potential ‘main character’ of the new Web at the point that in 2006, the TIME magazine dedicated his mirrored cover as Person of the Year to each of us: “You — Yes, You — Are TIME's Person of the Year” (TIME.com, 2006).
Based on the evidence currently available, it seems fair to suggest that social media is increasingly becoming a vital tool in the hand of each internet user in empowering his role and bolstering his narrative (Comm and Taylor, 2015, p.1). However, one trouble with examining this field is the lack of standard definitions of social media as they are “fragmented by platform” (Bartlett and Reynolds, 2015). With this in mind, “are social media wolves in sheep’s clothes?” (Tuten and Solomon 2015, p.19).
2.3 DAESH AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Having set the scene on the contemporary social media arena, the author reviews the relevant literature on how nonstate actors such as Daesh uses social media as it is a central part of their modus operandi.
In 2014 Daesh swept across Iraq with an operation that immediately went viral. Fighters posted selfie during a crucial phase of that battle, far from keeping that actions a secret. The messages shared by the militants were immediately boosted through the main social media platform under the hashtag #AllEyesOnISIS, specifically created for the beginning of the military campaign: suddenly t went viral (Singer and Brooking, 2019, p.5). Likewise, Farwell states the victory was inevitable as that powerful and so emotional videos reached and influenced at the same time journalist, adversaries, common people everywhere (Farwell, 2014, P.50).
The majority of studies and research point out the effect ISIS has reached in echoing his brand through the main social media platforms. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how they have been able to maintain a presence online as for the author of this paper it is most valuable insight. Internet censorship and his circumvent has always been an issue on a wide range, and Daesh’s rise to power has echoed these difficulties.
The devotion to the brand is an issue in our society as the brand is becoming ‘proxy religion’ in today’s life (Ham, 2001, p.2). Everyone should have an interest in empowering his image in the market using emotional or logical messages. Interestingly McDivitt argues that “a brand is not simply an identifier or a label, it is an identity,...[it] can be viewed as a seed; it must be designed, positioned and driven to grow” (2003, p.13). It is not a matter of the companies to brand themselves positioning at the top of the scale: it is also a matter of nations as they try to brand their exclusivity in reference to their cultural identity, historical heritage and geographical position (Van Ham, 2001). Accordingly, Marsh and Fawcett agreed that branding is not just about the marketing of products or services as it has evolved into the branding of states, countries and political parties (2011).
However, a gap identified is to understand the reason why a terroristic group relying on terrorist attacks and guerrilla procedures, decide to allocate its (apparently) limited resources to keep a social networking system alive instead of acquiring proper military capabilities.
2.4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
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2.4 DEFINING MODERN CONFLICTS
“The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish the kind of war on which they are embarking”. (Carl von Clausewitz, cited in Fastabend 1995). There are innumerable shades of war, no one similar to the previous one. It is about technological differences, political environment, social perceptions. However, when it comes to understanding theories behind them and the path to victory, all the nuances of the conflicts come down to a significant dichotomy: asymmetric versus an asymmetric approach. Symmetric conflicts are more about having superior weapons, larger armies: it’s about numbers and the control of the territory. The two world wars represent a significant example of a struggle over territory. In this regard, information plays a significant role but it is not considered as vital as it is in an asymmetric war. Deception campaign, detailed knowledge about the opposing commander are of little value when compared with physical protection and the overall superiority of the military power.
On the other hand, asymmetric conflicts are considered information-centric as “the struggle is fundamentally not over territory but over people, because the people hold critical information, […] because holding territory is not enough to secure victory” (Berman, Felter and Shapiro, 2019, p.7,9). The new battlefield is much bigger than a physical territory and his borders belong to everyone. In an asymmetric environment, every weakness could become a strength as the main parameter which affect the players is not based on the number of tanks owned but on the perception of that number. To summarize, “asymmetrical warfare is challenging the parameters of the military domain” (Brazzoli, 2007, p.218).
In the aftermath of the U.S. victory in the Gulf War against Iraq, Arquilla and Ronfeldt in an innovative article titled ‘Cyberwar is coming!’ pointed out the vital role information would have played in modern conflicts. They envisaged the battlefield as a place perceived in a different way by his players like a “chess game where you see the entire board, but your opponent sees only its own pieces—you can win even if he is allowed to start with additional powerful pieces” (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1993). They warned about the new battles in which ‘cyber soldiers’ might hinder military capabilities. Moreover, the envisaged what they called “netwar[…][as] a new way of thinking and a new way of conflict “ (Singer and Brooking, 2019). A new approach in waging a war, “a new entry on the spectrum of conflict that spans economic, political, and social as well as military forms of war” (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1993). In other words, the availability and the understanding of information itself seen as “weapon, used to dismantle some realities and to build others in their place” (Singer and Brooking, 2019, p.182). If this was true almost 30 years ago, it is even truer today as we live in an information society in which the threatscape is endlessly fluctuating through uncertainty, frictions and misperception. The nature of the conflict is evolving much faster than militaries. Possibly, this is intrinsic to the nature of conflicts but “in a networked world with a globalised media and the speed of the Internet, there are causes and effects which can balloon unexpectedly in their importance yet deflate just as rapidly as attention is turned elsewhere” (Mackay, Rowland and Tatham, 2011).
The weaker side is unlike to wage a war against a military superpower or NATO, against their overall technologic supremacy. So, the conflicts as we have witnessed in this century, are more likely to turn into an asymmetric confrontation in which, even the most militarily capable nation can be made vulnerable and exposed (Berman, Felter and Shapiro, 2019, p.6.); conflicts are getting intricate not necessarily for operational or logistical dares/questions, but “because of the conundrum of too much or too little information at any one time ensuring that our understanding is consistently incomplete and inconsistently reliable” (Mackay, Rowland and Tatham, 2011, p.21).
To get the advantage in the Information Age, it could not be sufficient or even appropriate investing on platforms and focusing on traditional approach; to fill the technological gap, the weaker side is keen to acquire “capability specifically designed to counter the […] perceived advantages” (Lawson and Barrons, 2016). However, the reinvented and ambiguous way of fighting the ‘new battle’ “it is not just a ‘weapon of the weak’ but can be employed by the dominant side in a conflict” (Galeotti, 2016).
One of the main features of the modern ‘non-linear’ conflicts is that “the deployment of information weapons […] acts as ‘invisible radiation upon its targets. ‘The population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon. So, the state doesn’t switch on its self-defence mechanism’ (Veprintsev et al. cited in Pomerantsev, 2019, pp.107). In this regard, Brazzoli points out that “Information warfare (IW) and particularly psychological operations (PsyOps) are major elements in the challenges for future warfare” (Brazzoli, 2007, p.217). While Information Warfare for his nature belongs to the military sphere, information conflict is considered to be an application of information warfare concepts in both military and civilian contexts” (Van Niekerk and Maharaj, 2013, p.1163). Since the beginning of the Twenty-First century it has been obvious how the human advancement has had a crucial impact on the nature of the conflicts; an era where there is the belief that knowledge is the power and where technology had imparted a quick change in the way the information may affect the character of the modern conflicts. The possession of information can create a tremendous advantage on the battlefield as the information is a strategic and influential resource, accessible to all competitors in all domains. This is known as information superiority and information conflicts are focusing on this trait of our changing environment (Brazzoli, 2007, pp. 218-219).
CHAPTER 3
3. METHODOLOGY
3.1 INTRODUCTION
The main source of information for this paper is based on secondary data collection. The process has been possible through the collection of data available on portals for statistics such as Statista, StatisticBrain, Mintel and other authoritative sources.
3.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The aim of Chapter 3 is to explain to the reader the methodological approach the author applies in his research. In Chapter 2 the author reviewed the existing literature on the topic, finding out a gap in …
Therefore, it is important to understand the rationale behind his use. Thus, the research question is:
“How social media has been used as a weapon in modern warfare by non-state actors such as Daesh (and its progenitor Al-Qaeda)?”
In order to answer to the above problem, this paper will focus on the following objectives:
d) To understand how social media is a multi-purpose tool in modern warfare,
e) To look at the Daesh Social Media Strategy,
f) To appreciate the contribution of Daesh’s ‘millennials fighters’ on weaponizing social media.
