A January 12th tweet on the U.S. Central Command’s Twitter profile announces the reactivation of their accounts, “We’re back!”
Staff Reporter
Earlier the same day, Centcom, the defense department’s command responsible for U.S. military presence in Iraq and Syria, was forced to temporarily suspend its Twitter and YouTube accounts following what the organization has referred to as “an act of cybervandalism.”
ISIS supporters hacked into Central Command’s social media profiles posting ISIS-promoting videos and tweets. Despite speculation that Centcom's accounts were accessed through the Pentagon, both organizations have since reported that only their social media profiles were compromised.
The second half of 2014 saw the Islamic State's use of Instagram and Twitter expand its presence into the far-reaching realm of mainstream social media with internet memes. Demonstrating a thorough understanding of western popular culture, graphic design, and Photoshop, the rebel group released (and continues to release) photos that appropriate various qualities recurring in today's viral media such as cats and pop culture references. One of their most circulated and least blatantly violent Twitter campaigns has been a series of pictures of kittens with high-powered assault rifles.
While Twitter and Instagram continue to delete accounts related to the extremist group, the nature of social media is such that anyone is free to join, and users are not held accountable for explicitly violent behavior unless they are reported by fellow users or until they release widely circulated evidence of their own personally documented acts of terrorism.
The terms under which accounts are reviewed and suspended by Twitter are effective, but, tragically, fail to prevent the mass dissemination of evidence of extremist executions. It was reported that Friday, January 16th, an ISIS-affiliated Twitter account released photos and video of public executions of gay men in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
In an age when social media has solidified its presence among society and expanded its reach into every faction of global culture, the extent to which this extremist group’s social media profiles are able to exist uninterrupted has allowed them to reach an unprecedented and terrifying level of mainstream exposure.