Online/Offline Column by Nalaka Gunawardene
There is no universally accepted definition of radicalisation. A widely used one, by the European Union (EU), describes it as “the process by which a person comes to adopt extreme political, social, or religious ideas and aspirations that inspire violence or acts of terror”.
In the wake of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks by Muslim youth inspired or instigated by the Islamic State (ISIS), there is renewed interest in understanding how youth radicalisation happens. Some are asking whether, among other factors, social media also contributes to it.
As noted last week, the nexus between youth radicalisation and the web and social media is nuanced and complicated; research around the world has not yet found a linear, cause-and-effect kind of relationship.
We quoted from an international team of scholars commissioned by UNESCO, to carry out a global mapping of research into the “assumed roles played by social media in violent radicalisation processes, especially as they affect youth and women”.
After assessing more than 550 published studies (done mainly during 2012-2016) covering titles in English (260), French (196), and Arabic (96), the team didn’t find evidence for a direct causation of radicalisation by social media. They concluded that research is still in early stages – and urged caution about the results and their interpretations. Their analysis was published in 2017 as a UNESCO report titled “Youth and Violent Extremism on Social Media” (see: http://bit.ly/YouthRad).
Study findings
“Radicalisation of young people online has yet to attract a critical mass of studies for the research to be credible in its conclusions and recommendations. There is currently only a small amount of quantitative of qualitative data on the topic, in contrast to the literature on empowerment of young people on safe internet use,” the study’s conclusion said.
It adds: “Currently, there is some evidence for correlation between exposure to extremist propaganda and recruitment and the expression of extremist attitudes and increased risk for violent radicalisation among youth, particularly in the case of extreme right-wing groups. However, the exact roles and processes via which internet and social media contribute to the radicalisation process need to be further explored.”
Where Asia is concerned, the review of research found no scientific literature on the internet and social media in relation to violent radicalisation in Asian countries (and written in English, French, Arabic, Spanish, or Chinese). But some exceptions were found in China and Indonesia.
Global social media platforms are blocked within China, and instead, there are home-grown search engines and web platforms in Chinese.
Research into radicalisation or terrorism in China is mainly focused on Xinjiang – the large autonomous region in north-western China that is home to many tribes and a separatist movement.
Separatist groups have been spreading their messages via TV, radio, and the web. The UNESCO report said: “Though there is no empirical evidence linking youth radicalisation to online social media, the anonymity and trans-border capacity of such media is seen as a support for organised terrorist propaganda.”
The Chinese Government has been responding to terrorist attacks by taking down websites, as well as blocking and filtering content. Its government also uses the local social media for counter-terrorism messaging.
Indonesia presents a different case study. The world’s largest Islam majority country (by population) had, by end 2018, around 150 million internet users which included 130 million Facebook users.
Research shows that extremists in Indonesia used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with young people, to train, and to fundraise online.
Recruitment is done through online games, propaganda videos on YouTube, and calls to purchase weapons.
Facilitator, not initiator
But correlation is not necessarily proof of causation. Most studies reviewed were predominantly descriptive. Even when there was some empirical data, studies were of low methodological quality, small scale, and relied on limited data sets.
“As a result, they fail to provide evidence on the drivers of interest to extremist sites, engagement in social media on these issues, the reasons for influence of content and the external and internal correlated factors, as well as the trajectories of youth who come to perpetrate violent acts,” said the report’s findings section.
However, the web and social media may be playing a role in the violent radicalisation process, mainly through the dissemination of information and propaganda, as well as reinforcing the identification and engagement of a (self)-selected audience interested in radical and violent messages. So rather than being initiators or causes of violent behaviours, the UNESCO study said, the web and social media can be facilitators of radicalisation.
Conducting more research faces many challenges. It requires infiltration of some kind to get access to encrypted and closed-access spaces or proxy sites (particularly cloaked sites).
Also, it is known that extremist groups do not trust large-scale commercial networks like Facebook, yet most studies focus on such networks – they overlook cloaked websites and other spaces where more information could be revealed about at-risk sympathisers, their identity, their social circles, and their actions.
Scholarly UNESCO is not the only body within the UN system that urges for more study of the nexus between the web and radicalisation. The Counter-Terrorism Committee, an arm of the Security Council, noted in a 2017 report titled “Comprehensive International Framework to Counter Terrorist Narratives”: “The role of the internet in the radicalisation of vulnerable individuals to commit acts of violence, along with other factors, needs further research.”
Radicalisation in Sri Lanka
Youth radicalisation is not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka. Indeed, for most of our post-independence history of 71 years, our society has been coping with the outcome of different kinds of youth radicalisation.
In a 2017 policy brief, Anishka De Zylva, a research associate at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies, mapped out different waves of radicalisation since the 1960s.
It started with the left-wing radicalisation under the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which led to two youth uprisings in 1971 and in 1987-89, both of which were violently crushed. Then Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an ethno-nationalist separatist group, waged war against the Government to carve out an independent state in the North and East of the country. This led to the civil war from 1983 to 2009 whose human, economic, and societal costs were enormous.
The third wave identified by De Zylva was what she called “politico-religious radicalisation” of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) – a hardline Sinhala Buddhist nationalist group that spreads politico-religious extremism (ongoing since 2012). As her paper notes, the BBS was accused of inciting violence against Muslim Sri Lankans, including by vandalising mosques, Muslim houses, and businesses.
Did such violence – including incidents in Aluthgama (June 2014), and in Ampara and Digana (February and March 2018) – push some Muslim youth to extremism of their own? This nexus needs careful study, but the current reality is we now have parallel waves of Sinhala Buddhist radicalisation and Islamic radicalisation, apparently each feeding off the other.
The JVP’s past violence was in the pre-web era, and while the LTTE was an early adopter of the web for their propaganda, the low number of users at the time, limited their reach.
In contrast, ISIS and BBS are active in a time of social media proliferation – both groups have a strong online presence. Exactly how they use these digital tools and web platforms can form the basis of a fascinating study.
(Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has been chronicling and critiquing information society for over 25 years. He tweets from @NalakaG)
There is no universally accepted definition of radicalisation. A widely used one, by the European Union (EU), describes it as “the process by which a person comes to adopt extreme political, social, or religious ideas and aspirations that inspire violence or acts of terror”.
In the wake of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks by Muslim youth inspired or instigated by the Islamic State (ISIS), there is renewed interest in understanding how youth radicalisation happens. Some are asking whether, among other factors, social media also contributes to it.
As noted last week, the nexus between youth radicalisation and the web and social media is nuanced and complicated; research around the world has not yet found a linear, cause-and-effect kind of relationship.
We quoted from an international team of scholars commissioned by UNESCO, to carry out a global mapping of research into the “assumed roles played by social media in violent radicalisation processes, especially as they affect youth and women”.
After assessing more than 550 published studies (done mainly during 2012-2016) covering titles in English (260), French (196), and Arabic (96), the team didn’t find evidence for a direct causation of radicalisation by social media. They concluded that research is still in early stages – and urged caution about the results and their interpretations. Their analysis was published in 2017 as a UNESCO report titled “Youth and Violent Extremism on Social Media” (see: http://bit.ly/YouthRad).
Study findings
“Radicalisation of young people online has yet to attract a critical mass of studies for the research to be credible in its conclusions and recommendations. There is currently only a small amount of quantitative of qualitative data on the topic, in contrast to the literature on empowerment of young people on safe internet use,” the study’s conclusion said.
It adds: “Currently, there is some evidence for correlation between exposure to extremist propaganda and recruitment and the expression of extremist attitudes and increased risk for violent radicalisation among youth, particularly in the case of extreme right-wing groups. However, the exact roles and processes via which internet and social media contribute to the radicalisation process need to be further explored.”
Where Asia is concerned, the review of research found no scientific literature on the internet and social media in relation to violent radicalisation in Asian countries (and written in English, French, Arabic, Spanish, or Chinese). But some exceptions were found in China and Indonesia.
Global social media platforms are blocked within China, and instead, there are home-grown search engines and web platforms in Chinese.
Research into radicalisation or terrorism in China is mainly focused on Xinjiang – the large autonomous region in north-western China that is home to many tribes and a separatist movement.
Separatist groups have been spreading their messages via TV, radio, and the web. The UNESCO report said: “Though there is no empirical evidence linking youth radicalisation to online social media, the anonymity and trans-border capacity of such media is seen as a support for organised terrorist propaganda.”
The Chinese Government has been responding to terrorist attacks by taking down websites, as well as blocking and filtering content. Its government also uses the local social media for counter-terrorism messaging.
Indonesia presents a different case study. The world’s largest Islam majority country (by population) had, by end 2018, around 150 million internet users which included 130 million Facebook users.
Research shows that extremists in Indonesia used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with young people, to train, and to fundraise online.
Recruitment is done through online games, propaganda videos on YouTube, and calls to purchase weapons.
Facilitator, not initiator
But correlation is not necessarily proof of causation. Most studies reviewed were predominantly descriptive. Even when there was some empirical data, studies were of low methodological quality, small scale, and relied on limited data sets.
“As a result, they fail to provide evidence on the drivers of interest to extremist sites, engagement in social media on these issues, the reasons for influence of content and the external and internal correlated factors, as well as the trajectories of youth who come to perpetrate violent acts,” said the report’s findings section.
However, the web and social media may be playing a role in the violent radicalisation process, mainly through the dissemination of information and propaganda, as well as reinforcing the identification and engagement of a (self)-selected audience interested in radical and violent messages. So rather than being initiators or causes of violent behaviours, the UNESCO study said, the web and social media can be facilitators of radicalisation.
Conducting more research faces many challenges. It requires infiltration of some kind to get access to encrypted and closed-access spaces or proxy sites (particularly cloaked sites).
Also, it is known that extremist groups do not trust large-scale commercial networks like Facebook, yet most studies focus on such networks – they overlook cloaked websites and other spaces where more information could be revealed about at-risk sympathisers, their identity, their social circles, and their actions.
Scholarly UNESCO is not the only body within the UN system that urges for more study of the nexus between the web and radicalisation. The Counter-Terrorism Committee, an arm of the Security Council, noted in a 2017 report titled “Comprehensive International Framework to Counter Terrorist Narratives”: “The role of the internet in the radicalisation of vulnerable individuals to commit acts of violence, along with other factors, needs further research.”
Radicalisation in Sri Lanka
Youth radicalisation is not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka. Indeed, for most of our post-independence history of 71 years, our society has been coping with the outcome of different kinds of youth radicalisation.
In a 2017 policy brief, Anishka De Zylva, a research associate at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies, mapped out different waves of radicalisation since the 1960s.
It started with the left-wing radicalisation under the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which led to two youth uprisings in 1971 and in 1987-89, both of which were violently crushed. Then Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an ethno-nationalist separatist group, waged war against the Government to carve out an independent state in the North and East of the country. This led to the civil war from 1983 to 2009 whose human, economic, and societal costs were enormous.
The third wave identified by De Zylva was what she called “politico-religious radicalisation” of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) – a hardline Sinhala Buddhist nationalist group that spreads politico-religious extremism (ongoing since 2012). As her paper notes, the BBS was accused of inciting violence against Muslim Sri Lankans, including by vandalising mosques, Muslim houses, and businesses.
Did such violence – including incidents in Aluthgama (June 2014), and in Ampara and Digana (February and March 2018) – push some Muslim youth to extremism of their own? This nexus needs careful study, but the current reality is we now have parallel waves of Sinhala Buddhist radicalisation and Islamic radicalisation, apparently each feeding off the other.
The JVP’s past violence was in the pre-web era, and while the LTTE was an early adopter of the web for their propaganda, the low number of users at the time, limited their reach.
In contrast, ISIS and BBS are active in a time of social media proliferation – both groups have a strong online presence. Exactly how they use these digital tools and web platforms can form the basis of a fascinating study.
(Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has been chronicling and critiquing information society for over 25 years. He tweets from @NalakaG)