"Muslim country" turns out to be using 46,000 Twitter accounts

Organizations that refer to "Islamic States" (Islamic State, IS) are known to skirt supporters from around the world skillfully using SNS such as Twitter. Report on a massive survey of Twitter accounts related to IS "The ISIS Twitter Census"Is released, and it is clear how much IS is using Twitter effectively.

The ISIS Twitter Census
(PDF file)http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/03/isis-twitter-census-berger-morgan/the-isis-twitter-census-defining-and-describing-the-population-of-isis-supporters-on-twitter.pdf

According to The ISIS Twitter Census, the number of IS related Twitter accounts that are in tune with IS is at least 46,000, up to 90,000. Twitter froze the IS related account as appropriate, suspended its use, but said that it has not been able to counter the large number of new accounts appearing one after another. This is because Twitter, like many SNSs, is the procedure of freezing accounts only after getting a message from a third party, so it is unavoidable that the effect of account suspension is limited The book pointed out.

It is like this when arranging the location of posters on the Twitter profile in descending order. I will continue with Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, America, Egypt.


This is the location value of the account in Google Maps. The location is mainly Iraq and Syria ... ...


It is dotted also in Europe and North Africa.


Looking at time zones, unlike the distribution of Google Maps, it continues with Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, Kiev in the capital of Ukraine, and Athens, the capital of Greece.


About the account name, if examined only for Arabic characters, the most common in "ISIS Reference (IS related)" is Dantotsu.


ISS Reference (IS related) "is also inherent.


There are less than 50 average tweets that most accounts make on the day, but some accounts have more than 150 active tweets each day.


Distribution of follower number of IS related account is like this. Most account followers are under 1000 people. This is overwhelmingly few compared to celebrities such as President Obama with more than 50 million followers, which makes it difficult to locate IS related accounts for that.


Looking at the year when the account was created, you can see that the IS related account explosively increased in 2014. However, it is obvious that some of them were created in 2008 when President Obama won the presidential election, and that IS is not a recent organization.


It is estimated that about 60% of the accounts were created in total, and the number of new accounts by month in 2014 is plotted, especially in September. In addition, since the number of accounts that were suspended from Twitter by Twitter is about 1000 in September 2014 to December, it is obvious that we can not deal with accounts that appear one after another.


This is a graph showing when the last tweet was.


A common avatar is like this. Besides the IS flag, the IS leaderAbu Bakr al-Bagudadi,Jihadi John,Osama bin LadenAvatars such as are used.


Mr. J · M · Berger who gathered The ISIS Twitter Census said that IS's Twitter activities are highly controlled and sophisticated and that they have succeeded in promoting the most Twitter among all terrorist organizations I will.