Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Many of the electronic groups that are run by terrorist organizations have reduced their online activities at the behest of terrorist leaders following huge losses.

The virtual groups have failed to achieve the sought-after objectives, mainly attracting more members of the public and instigating sedition, Al-Hayat daily reported.

The organizations will change their social media war tactics and find more effective ways to achieve their sought-after goals, according to a report issued by the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology – named “Etidal” meaning “moderation”.

The report showed that online content showing extremist ideologies is on the decrease on Twitter during the last three months. Etidal Center said the terrorist groups succeeded in the last years in turning the Internet into a virtual war arena led by virtual armies.

The groups spread false news about false victories that did not happen in reality and even expanded their network on the social media websites. The report explained in detail how and why the terrorist groups decided to change their online recruitment strategies.

Etidal Center has been monitoring terrorist sites for a long time and noticed that the groups have started to change their policies. The report indicated that the videos of terrorist operations in conflict-stricken areas have decreased sharply and no videos have been posted for a long time, although in the past the groups used to post a large number of online videos for the sake of deceiving people into believing that the groups were scoring a victory on the ground.

The report noted that most of the groups posted old news that was not updated, changed their names and replaced them with non-religious ones and did not post any content explaining the current status of the group. The report stressed that the increasing awareness among the public has helped in reducing the online activities of these terrorist groups.

Etidal Center published a recent study showing that the Daesh (so-called IS) group, which proclaimed Khilafa in June 2014, has increased its online terrorist activities while Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda have not. The study gave a short history of online recruitment methods used by terrorist groups. Al-Qaeda was the first to use email in 1995 for recruiting. Electronic jihad was launched in 1999 and Al-Qaeda website in 2000.

In 2004 and 2006, Al-Qaeda online activities saw a huge change in policies following the launch of Facebook and Twitter respectively. The terrorist group recruited 30,000 members from 100 countries and sent them to conflict zones in Syria and Iraq.