ISIS and Social Media: The Combatant Commander's Guide to Countering ISIS's Social Media Campaign

Abstract

This paper analyzes ISIS s use of social media and offers recommendations to the combatant commander on what he/she can do to counter the threat. By exploring the relevance and importance of social media, I will demonstrate how social media represents a paradigm shift in communication. I will illustrate the significant opportunities and challenges that social media creates, and provide the operational commander s staff with a guide to address this new construct. This paper offers a brief history of ISIS as an historical frame of reference and details how ISIS uses social media in its operations. I will demonstrate the important role social media plays in ISIS s operational and strategic objectives. Next, I will illustrate the importance of this to the combatant commander in intelligence collection, lines of effort, and current/future operations. Finally, I will provide tailored suggestions for the combatant commander and his staff to consider when prosecuting an information operations campaign against ISIS consistent with U.S. policy and First Amendment Constitutional concerns.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 07, 2015
Accession Number
ADA621060

Entities

People

  • Nathan K. Schneider

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Combatant Commanders
  • Department Of State
  • Freedom Of Speech
  • Governments
  • Information Operations
  • Intelligence Collection
  • Law
  • Media
  • Military Operations
  • Military Organizations
  • National Security
  • Social Media
  • Social Networking Services
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • United States
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.