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Social media is becoming a rapid useful tool for recruitment and raising individuals for radical activities and extremist activities. India, with its unique socio-political landscape, is especially susceptible to social media misuse. It briefly investigates the challenges created by social media extremism at India and globally. It examines psychological and social effects of platforms such as X, interconnection between local and international propagation, and limitations of existing regulatory measures. The brief briefly makes a case for a multi-dimensional strategy to address these intervals to allow India to effectively compete with the developed threats of social media extremism, balanced the needs of security with the right to freedom of expression.
Publicity is a powerful tool to influence public opinion and normalize violence. For extremists, a primary promotional strategy is the exploitation of the weaknesses of individuals – such as emotional instability, social isolation, dissatisfaction with government policies, and related or respect for respect – a “us versus them” mentality, often using psychological warfare to use psychological war and justify violence.
In recent years, extremist actors have rapidly used social media platforms-to spread-clean-cost, sharp, decentralized and globally connected-to spread their ideologies, recruit followers and promote support for their activities. Terrorist groups are moving to the Internet for activities such as recruitment and spreading violent materials through devices such as hashtags, videos, pictures and open letters. Although social media is an envelope rather than a primary driver of violent fanaticism, its role cannot be underestimated in strengthening extremist ideologies, identifying potential recruitments and promoting engagement.
Each platform provides unique benefits to extremist groups. For example, Facebook acts as a decentralized hub to share information; The X allows for rapid communication and engagement with the global audience; And YouTube video is a favorite forum for promoting that is often ready to be echoed with specific cultural and linguistic audiences.
By 2024, there were about 5.35 billion internet users worldwide, each of which produces about 15.87 terabytes (TB) data, including 500 million tweets on X, daily. In 2023, Facebook had the most visitors globally, producing about 4,000 TB data per day that year. The same study found that WhatsApp users share the most images, with 6.9 billion photos shared, shared daily among users, followed by Snapchat, 3.8 billion photos.
Terrorist groups can easily reach registered users on social media without building their audience. Extremist groups make emotionally charged materials and exploit global access, oblivion and interactive capabilities of social media. For fanaticism and recruitment, terrorist groups spread violent materials targeting weak youth, such as promotional videos that show military training and other battlefield activities. Extremists also use video games to embed their narratives, which modify popular titles to reflect jihadi subjects.
They use visual and visual -visual mediums, such as videos of attacks or symbolic imagination, to trigger powerful psychological reactions and to instill violent behavior. The weak person, especially young, are ready for these narratives, the purpose of which is to provide a sense of purpose and identity.
Understanding the methods and strategies using extremist groups on social media is necessary to combat their impact. By examining psychological and social mobility in sports, policy makers and stakeholders can develop effective counter-stories and interventions to address and prevent its spread. This will ensure that digital space enables positive engagement rather than division, conflict and violence.
It uses interviews and analysis of research materials to identify the promotional strategies used by terrorist groups to rationalize its acts of brief terror and recruit members and to make them radical. About 100 such images, slogans, hashtags and social media posts were assessed in English, Hindi and Urdu. According to the analysis, extremist groups target three types of audiences: general public, to attain sympathy and justify their tasks; Enemy groups, usually the government and its various agencies; And the current members of the group to keep them motivated.
This paper can be accessed here.
This paper is written by Soumya Awasthi, ORF, New Delhi.
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