The Sophisticated Social Media Strategy of ISIL

The advance of an army used to be marked by war drums. Now it's marked by volleys of tweets.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) also called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Sunni militant group that seized Iraq's second-largest city last week and is now pledging to take Baghdad, has honed this new technique — most recently posting photos on Twitter of an alleged mass killing of Iraqi soldiers. But what's often overlooked in press coverage is that ISIL doesn't just have strong, organic support online. It also employs social-media strategies that inflate and control its message. Extremists of all stripes are increasingly using social media to recruit, radicalize Read more...