Five countries where Islamic State propaganda receives most clicks

LONDON: Who looks at Islamist extremist content online?

A new study released by the Policy Exchange think tank in London, whose reports often inform government policy in Britain, ranked top consumers of propaganda produced by the Islamic State, by country of origin, as measured by clicks.

The top consumers of IS videos were from Turkey, the US, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Britain, which registered the largest number of clicks in Europe.

The report, The New Netwar, indicates IS is pumping out more material than ever.

However, the number of people looking in any one country could be measured in the tens of thousands. And big internet companies could limit what is available, should they choose or be forced to do so.

“We are certainly not winning the war online,” the report said. “The spate of terrorist attacks the UK suffered in the first half of 2017 confirmed that online extremism is a real and present danger.

“In each case, online radicalisation played some part in driving the perpetrators to violence.

“As a society, we are struggling to grasp the extent of the challenge and also appropriate ways of responding. It is clear that the status quo is not working.”

Although IS is being driven from its territories in Syria and Iraq, the authors said “the movement produces around 100 pieces of new content in an average week (and often much more than that). This adds to an ever-growing archive of material built up over three decades”. They said IS has released 2 000 “official” videos.

The authors found 40% of the clicks on IS propaganda were referred through Twitter. “For this reason, we argue that more must be done to force jihadist content out of the mainstream.”