Are We Advancing in the Social Media War on Terror?

We appear to be making progress when it comes to combating ISIS propaganda online.

That is the message from Rick Stengel, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, in an interview with CNN.

“We have evidence that there are young people who are not joining because we have somehow interceded,” said Stengel, who had just returned from visiting U.S. allies in the Middle East.

“They’re reading the messages; they’re hearing the messages—not just from us but from the hundreds of Islamic clerics who have said that this is a perversion of Islam, from the hundreds of Islamic scholars who have said the same thing.” Stengel called the “foreign fighters” in Syria and Iraq originating from the U.S. “a very small cohort.”

No doubt this will be a protracted battle for the allegiance of disaffected youth, a vulnerable and easy target for gangs and cult-like groups such as ISIS. And the U.S. presence on the Internet through the State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communication is critically important against a group that has taken technical sophistication to a new level.

News reports have focused on the CSCC’s dissemination of material that shows graphic images of ISIS brutality and lethal violence against civilians, Christians, other Muslims, aid workers and journalists. Also, there have been campaigns such as the U.S.-sponsored Twitter hashtag “ThinkAgainTurnAway,” which posts news from the frontlines in Iraq and Syria and cautions potential sympathizers.

Equally important will be arrests of ISIS sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain, who now face prosecution under anti-terrorism laws—as well as losses sustained by ISIS on the ground in Syria and Iraq. In other words, it will take an all-out offensive by the U.S. government to win this battle for hearts and minds.