The way ISIS uses social media and the internet is like nothing before. On this week's episode of the Internet Explorer podcast, we spoke with BuzzFeed reporters Ellie Hall in Washington, D.C. and Hussein Kesvani in London, both of whom have been covering ISIS's unique place on the internet.
Hussein Kesvani has written about British citizens who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS. He also has followed the way that they use Twitter, something that is often hard for Westerners to understand since "all the juicy gossip happens in Arabic."
One thing he's seen is how gleefully ISIS tweeters will be if their accounts get shut down. It's a point of pride.
Ellie Hall found two young American women who where using Twitter to talk about how they had moved to Syria and married men in ISIS. She talks about how ISIS uses platforms like Tumblr to give detailed instructions for how to make the journey into ISIS territory, as well as functions as a tool for recruiting.
One of the strangest things is how Japanese social media users reacted when ISIS kidnapped two Japanese journalists. They created the "photoshop Grand Prix" to make fun of ISIS by turning their images into crappy memes.
Japan responds to #ISIS with hilarious photoshop contest. Follow #ISISクソコラグランプリ and entertain yourselves :P
They also created an anime character called "ISIS-chan" in an attempt to flood social media hashtags for ISIS with innocuous images of a girl.
The more we talk about this cutie #ISISchan with the keyword #ISIS, the less terrorists' messages appear on the web!