"Social media is used by al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and ISIL in Africa. The importance of cross-media communications to the strategies of all three groups is underlined by the existence of dedicated branches for media planning, namely al-Shabaab’s al-Kata’ib, Boko Haram’s Media Office of West Afri
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ca Province and ISIL’s Al Hayat Media Center. In part driven by growing Internet access in Africa and on-going technological advancement, it is clear that the use of social media by all three groups has increased in recent years – although this inevitably varies by geographical area depending on the level of ICT penetration. There appears to be a spectrum of sophistication across the three groups in relation to their social media strategies: ISIL’s strategy is more advanced than those of its two counterparts, which may be linked to its more far-reaching and international support base. While still less sophisticated overall than those of ISIL and al-Shabaab, Boko Haram’s social media strategy has become more professionalised since its declaration of allegiance to ISIL in 2015, whether due to the direct or indirect influence of ISIL’s concerted online activities." (Summary of key findings, page 65-66)
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"A RAND Corporation study examined Russian-language content on social media and the broader propaganda threat posed to the region of former Soviet states that include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and, to a lesser extent, Moldova and Belarus. In addition to employing a state-funded multilingu
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al television network, operating various Kremlin-supporting news websites, and working through several constellations of Russia-backed “civil society” organizations, Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine, which has been an active propaganda battleground since the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Other countries in the region look at Russia’s actions and annexation of Crimea and recognize the need to pay careful attention to Russia’s propaganda campaign. To conduct this study, RAND researchers employed a mixed-methods approach that used careful quantitative analysis of social media data to understand the scope of Russian social media campaigns combined with interviews with regional experts and U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign." (Back cover)
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