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News | May 29, 2019

Owl in the Olive Tree post on "Telegram and Online Addiction to Terrorist Propaganda"

By Mia Bloom

Minerva-funded researcher Mia Bloom's Owl in the Olive Tree blog post on "Telegram and Online Addiction to Terrorist Propaganda."

The online media platforms of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) blend graphic audiovisual content with ideological religious writings to sanction and justify violent terrorist tactics throughout the world. ISIS has utilized Internet propaganda to its advantage, not only to bolster its expansion in Iraq and Syria, but for recruitment and dissemination of their ideology worldwide. In recent years, Jihadi groups like ISIS have relied on open Application Programming Interface (API) platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Tumblr to distribute such content. These social media platforms have been under considerable pressure to monitor and delete the accounts of a variety of bad actors from across the political spectrum; as a result, these companies have started to increasingly police their own platforms and delete accounts identified as disseminating propaganda.

However, while companies like Facebook and Twitter have taken steps to address the issue of bad-actors on their platforms, one notable holdout in terms of prioritizing secrecy and privacy is Telegram....

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