Section outline
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Hear from Athina Tzemprin, Manager at Moonshot on how women and youth become key targets for online radicalization and recruitment.
Source: PAVE Project. ‘’Athina Tzemprin: Women and Youth as Targets for Online Radicalization and Recruitment.’’ 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ll92gpi9eI.
Youth are generalized as most involved and active within violent extremist groups, but research and implementation experience have shown that only a small portion of young people who are vulnerable to violent extremism actually become violent. However, as youth are often key users of the internet and broadly susceptible to propaganda, the internet, therefore, is an effective mechanism for youth radicalization and recruitment. The PAVE research highlighted “the majority of youth in Kosovo, prior to going to Syria, had developed the majority of their radical ties through social media, not traditional media.”
Around the world, youth are becoming radicalized and recruited by extremist organizations. In 2015 alone, the United Nations verified 274 cases of children having been recruited by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Syrian Arab Republic. The United Nations verified the existence of centers in rural Aleppo, Dayr al-Zawr and rural Raqqah that provided military training to at least 124 boys between 10 and 15 years of age. Verification of the use of children as foreign fighters has increased significantly, with 18 cases involving children as young as 7 years of age. The use of children as child executioners was reported and appeared in video footage. In Iraq, in two incidents in June and September 2015, more than 1,000 children were reportedly abducted by ISIL from Mosul district. These figures are likely to be significant underestimates because of the limited opportunities to gain access and monitor violations against children.
Grooming
One tactic extremists use to engage and recruit youth is through ‘grooming.’ Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them. While the drivers and objectives are different, the actual process of grooming is broadly similar to radicalization, with the exploitation of a person’s vulnerability usually being the critical factor. Those who are targeted are often offered something ideological, such as an eternal spiritual reward, or sometimes something physical, such as an economic incentive, that will make them 'feel better' about themselves or their situation. People who groom and radicalize also use the anonymity of the web as a layer of protection to avoid detection. The added ability to encrypt communication can make law enforcement extremely difficult. A predator may use the internet to offer support, friendship and belonging are all used to gain influence and control, so it’s important to be alert. Despite the best efforts of social media providers and platforms, the sheer volume of web traffic means that questionable content can be uploaded and distributed for a considerable length of time.
It’s critical to point out that extremists use lots of different channels to try to connect with someone who they think could be vulnerable and persuadable. They will look at posts, likes and shares and social media profiles and friend lists to identify people to target. The ways young people are recruited however, vary widely across contexts, gender, and other identity factors; often with extremists capitalizing on feelings of insecurity, discrimination, or social isolation.
Online Recruitment of Girls and Young Women
For example, online recruitment of girls and young women is proportionately more prevalent than their male counterparts as they often face restrictions in public spaces due to societal gender norms. Factors contributing to young women joining extremist organizations include: rejection of Western feminism; online contact with recruiters who offer marriage and adventure; peer or family influence; adherence to the ideology and politics; naivety and romantic optimism; and the chance to be part of something new, exciting and illicit.
Extremist groups and pages on social media that are specifically targeted at young women tend to be very colorful, often including internet-famous cat and dog videos to generate attention.
For young men, extremist groups may play off of their desire to ' belong.’ For instance, this quest for significance gets personal when ISIS directly challenges a male’s masculinity and shames him to join their cause or commit attacks in the West. It gets especially personal when one considers the messengers along with the message.
For example, one of ISIS’ latest propaganda videos features a French-language a cappella chant containing footage of young children dressed in military fatigues, fully armed, and marching in bombed out city streets. The video was accompanied by lyrics declaring, “Our warriors are everywhere ready to sacrifice themselves, beware our orphans are growing.” In another video, potential recruits are encouraged to join up and fight alongside ISIS militants while a picture of a young boy holding an assault rifle is shown as the words “What’s your excuse?” flash across the screen. ISIS’ use of child soldiers in their propaganda videos plays on the discomfort many men experience at the thought of a child being more empowered than themselves to avenge Muslims’ perceived humiliation.
Click the link to watch the video: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/isis-threat/video-isis-child-jihadists-sing-in-french-your-blood-will-flow-452968
Source: The Jerusalem Post. ‘’ISIS child jihadists sing in French - 'Your blood will flow.’’ May 3, 2016. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/isis-threat/video-isis-child-jihadists-sing-in-french-your-blood-will-flow-452968.
Female ISIS supporters also use narratives of shame and emasculation to reach out to and recruit impressionable “fence sitters” who have not yet taken decisive action. For instance, a 2015 tweet by a user named @UsofNuh declared, “There are women who are already here before you and look, they are already doing more than you have for the Islamic State.”
Memes
Violent extremists are supplementing their traditional messaging—which can rely heavily on lengthy, academic-style recitations and philosophical arguments—with memes that are faster and easier to consume. Such content allows quick sharing of vast amounts of information with like-minded end users and can normalize or lessen the gravity of violent extremist narratives. It is important for first responders to understand how violent extremist narratives are being spread using memes, while also respecting constitutionally protected rights and appreciating that the memes discussed in this paper (or others like them) may be shared by those who are not connected to violent extremism.
Photo Source: Liang, C. and Cross, J. (July 2020). ‘White Crusade: How to Prevent Right-Wing Extremists from Exploiting the Internet.’ Geneva Centre for Security Policy. https://dam.gcsp.ch/files/doc/white-crusade-how-to-prevent-right-wing-extremists-from-exploiting-the-internet.
Pepe the Frog, an internet meme, serves as an example to subversive exposure of a meme (an image that is meant to be funny and subversively evocative but also gets the viewer to think about whether the views they had been taught are true, or if alternative facts are available). ‘Pepe’ the cartoon frog, created for humor on a non-political site, became appropriated as a popular figure in far-right circles. Recent appropriations of Pepe as Hitler, a Klansman, and multiple racist caricatures has earned the frog a spot in the American Defamation League hate symbols database. But what gives memes like Pepe their power is their ability to spread messages quickly. Because they use widely recognizable visuals and text formulas to pass their message (referencing famous movies, pop culture, famous political events), they are effective at generating ‘lols.’ Whether their content is comedic and light-hearted or angry and nihilistic, they make the viewer laugh and easy to consume no matter the message. Memes, whichever way they are generated, can effectively convey a message to millions of people across the world and are incredibly effective at targeting youth on sites like Reddit or Instagram. The result of this is a format for disseminating information virally, regardless of its veracity.
PAVE research demonstrated within the MENA region, that a “huge number of media outputs and activity shows the extremist organizations’ ability to employ social networks for two primary purposes: ideological propaganda and demonstration of greatness and strength. This attracted many young people from the Majdal Anjar region in Lebanon as they were watching many of these [video] releases and telling their friends about them. They would meet to watch together the videos and documentaries issued by the Islamic State, with the same excitement of friends gathering to go to the cinema.
While youth may be one of the most susceptible stakeholder groups to radicalization, we need to remember that they are also key partners to design and implement preventing and countering extremism programming and policies. We will circle back to this in section 2!
Interested in learning more? Check out PAVE Training Module 3: ‘Advancing Inclusivity in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism Efforts.’
