Islamic State's Twitter traffic down by 45 pc in 2 years

Islamic State’s Twitter traffic has plummeted by 45 percent in the past two years, says the Obama administration, as the US and its allies have countered messages of jihadi glorification with a flood of online images and statements about torture and enslavement at the hands of the extremist organization.

A teddy bear with Arabic writing and messages saying IS "slaughters childhood,"kills innocence,"lashes purity" or "humiliates children";a male hand covering a female's mouth, saying IS "deprives woman her voice";a woman in a black niqab (veil), bloody tears coming from a bruised eye, and the caption: "Women under ISIS.

Enslaved.Battered.Beaten.Humiliated. Flogged." are some of the images that have been used by officials to counteract against the propaganda of IS.

The international coalition to fight IS that was formed in 2014 works around multiple goals: military action and cutting off foreign fighters and finances, confronting the group's extremist ideology and stemming the militants' growing popularity in the Arab world and beyond. In the beginning, the online action had limited effect as much of the anti-IS content put online was in English. Today, however, memes and images depicting the group's treatment of women, children, and others are presented almost entirely in Arabic.

Whereas the US previously blasted the information out itself, it disseminates messages now through Muslim governments, religious leaders, schools, youth leaders and advocacy groups with credibility in local communities. Data show the proliferation of IS propaganda decreasing."We're denying ISIL the ability to operate uncontested online, and we're seeing their social media presence decline," said Michael Lumpkin, head of the Global Engagement Center, which coordinates the US government's approach to fighting extremist messaging. Using an alternate acronym for the group, he said "anti-ISIL audiences are increasingly vocal on social media. This only weakens ISIL's ability to recruit, a key aim of our messaging efforts."

According to data from The Associated Press, there is a 6:1 ratio of anti-IS content online compared with pro-IS content - an improvement from last year. When pro-IS Twitter accounts are discovered today, they have about 300 followers each. In 2014, such accounts had 1,500 followers each, according to the data.

Among social platforms, Twitter has been the main focus of the administration. The micro-blogging site has been most heavily used by IS to crowdsource supporters and potential attackers, though it also has used YouTube and Facebook.

What the US basically does is to undermine many of IS' most oft-cited claims. These include the group's supposed invincibility on the battlefield or that its caliphate is good for Muslims. American partners have flooded social media with messages highlighting the group's territorial losses and inability to effectively govern or provide basic services to areas under its control.

Though there is no formal agreement between the US Government and Twitter, the company’s new policies to identify and eliminate tweets supporting terrorism has helped the US cause. Until recently, child pornography was the only abuse automatically flagged for human review on social media. Terrorist messaging is now also included and Twitter announced earlier this year it was using a spam-fighting technology as well.Since mid-2015, the company has suspended more than 125,000 such accounts.

Officials accept that the focus on Twitter may be driving some of IS' traffic to secure message platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram. But such a shift means the group's propaganda is reaching a smaller audience. On these networks, it is the job of intelligence and law enforcement officials to root out any clues about the future terrorist activity.