Fear on Campus: Does Social Media Promote Terrorism?

Team 4 members:Jan Fuller

Julia BrunnerAlexandra Braun

Michael HoffMonte VanDykeMitchell Gayne

Research ProblemDoes social media have an impact on how people receive information regarding terrorists attacks and events and how they react seeing it on social media?

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Significance/Purpose of StudySocial media has taken on a very prominent role in the everyday lives of Americans in the past decade,

specifically for college students acknowledging the feudal cruelty and overactive use of social media through cyber terrorism.

According to a study done by the Pew Research Center (2014), there is evidence that prove that “89% of people aged 18-29 use social networking sites”.

Terrorists are known for utilizing the social media platforms to spread fear and anxiety, for example, the viral footage of the executing of James Foley on YouTube and other media websites.

It is evident the Islamic organization, ISIS, made everyone curious about the 90,000 social messages with real footage of the damage the United States done in Iraq and Afghanistan that leaked from their official Twitter pages.

Well-known newscast websites, such as CNN and FOX news, usually report on terrorist activity, which is then broadcasted all over social media. Consistent with the PRC study (Gao 2015), about “61% of this generation that use the internet look to Facebook to get their political news”.

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Research Questions

1. How often do FSU students get terrorism related information via social media?

2. How do they perceive the terrorism-related information?

3. What do they think about regulating social media regarding terrorism-related information?

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Data collection methods and overview of the research instrument development

Surveys developed using qualtrics & distributed via social media and class rosters within the IT/ICT community at Florida State.

Surveys aimed at understanding where and how college students feel about the impact on social media as well as understanding the expansion of terrorism in today’s world.

Distributed via Facebook, class roster

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Population, sample, and sampling techniques: Recruitment strategy and process

We focused on FSU students that came from a variety of majors, colleges, and age groups.

A survey was used for our voluntary sampling technique. We were able to spread our survey link through social media and email.

We were able to access a large demographic through the use of the survey link and the sharing feature through Facebook. This method resulted in a total of 73 completed surveys. 6

51Null 4

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RQ1: How often do FSU students get terrorism related information via social media?How did you first find out about the Paris Terrorist attacks that occurred on November 13, 2015?

57% of people found out about the Paris

Terrorist attack through Social Media.# Answer Bar Response %

1 Social Media 0.56521739130435 39 57%

2 Television 0.11594202898551 8 12%

3 Newspaper 0 0 0%

11 Google 0 0 0%

12 Friend / Colleague 0.057971014492754 4 6%

13 Family 0.043478260869565 3 4%

14 Mobile Alert / Application 0.08695652173913 6 9%

15 Other 0.1304347826087 9 13%

Total 69 100%

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RQ1: How often do FSU students get terrorism related information via social media?

We asked if you think “cyber terrorism” is a threat on a scale from

0 to 10.

How many time have you ever seen news articles about terrorism or terrorist attacks on your social media feed?

Out of 58 people the average response was a 6.91

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33 people

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RQ2: How do they perceive terrorism-related information?

What are your feelings about terrorists using social media to recruit members to their cause?

38% of respondents had overall negative feelings

14% of respondents reported feeling scared

17% of respondents acknowledged that this was a smart tactic

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Some responses from our survey“It makes me uneasy”“I find it absolutely terrifying”“I think it’s awful but easy for them to do. “I am not a terrorist, but there are plenty of idiots on the internet so it’s a good strategy”“It’s bad”“People are twisted”“Very good idea of then. Modernization”“I feel that it is wrong and unlawful”

RQ2: How do they perceive the terrorism-related information?

Should social media broadcast news about terrorism on the internet?

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RQ2: How do they perceive terrorism-related information?

How threatened did you feel about the possibility of a terrorist attack occurring on

U.S. soil after seeing coverage of recent attacks?

Do you think that terrorists disguise their plans on the

internet?

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RQ 3: How do students think of regulating social media regarding terrorism related information?

49% of students believe social media should broadcast news about terrorism on the

internet.

48% of students believe the government should not have the responsibility of blocking

social media posts published by terrorists.

48% of students are seeing multiple news articles regarding terrorist activity on their social

media platform and 12% are seeing it once or less.

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RQ 3: How do students think of regulating social media regarding terrorism related information?

“Social media sites should monitor profiles”

“They should use that information to track the terrorists”

“Take down their social media sites so they can no longer use them” Overall, from this open-ended question asking what people think we should do to combat terrorists using social media, responses were similar across the board that it is up to the social media company to take control of the situation.

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Discussions & Implications

The world has gotten smaller as a result of social media:

“89% of people aged 18-29 use social networking sites and 75% of those groups are using it to obtain news stories and current event information” (Pew 2014, p.13)

47% of users comment on checking their social media more than ten times per day and 68% use check it at least 6 times per day

57% of people found out about the Paris Attacks via social media, with T.V. coming in at 12% and other being 13%

Our data supports this notion of a smaller world due to social media, as almost half of respondents reported to use social media at least 6 times per day and more than half used it to hear about other reported terrorist attacks.

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Discussions & Implications

Connection between fear & social media:

“Social media has become an ideal platform to spread fear through terrorism because of its

availability to anyone who has access to the internet” (Wu, 2015).

68% found cyberterrorism to be a legitimate threat.

48% were scared of an attack happening on U.S. soil after seeing relevant stories on their social media.

Social media does in fact increase the amount of fear in users when used by terrorists to broadcast ulterior motives or otherwise offensive material.

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Discussions & Implications

Terrorism and Social Media Regulation:

“No one nation owns the internet so blocking messages of terrorism has been difficult without global cooperation..

The problem with this is that the amount of data that would have to be sorted through to find messages of terrorism is

enormous. Also, there is not one single definition of terrorism which makes regulating it problematic because there is no

official way to differentiate it from other internet posts ” (Wu, 2015).

“48% of people found that it was okay for social media to post terrorist related stories

Only 26% of users thought that gov. should block these profiles/stories

Our research supports the notion that users don’t feel that the government should block these posts/stories, as

there is not a way to really combat this without infringing on peoples rights. 16

Conclusion

This study was provided to give you a viewpoint to understand the nature and capability of an emerging threat against the college community through social media.

This presentation was also brought to you to help other college students to be more aware for their protective measures and to be considerate about the concern of a current, developing threat to the younger generation dealing with cyber terrorism.

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Reflecting of Research

There is a good size population willing to do surveys to help out other classmates having well over 75 responses (using online survey using volunteer sampling).

Qualtrics gathers information and displays it in a great way that is easy to read and use for observation

Important to communicate with group members to make sure everything is getting done in an effective way as there was a lot to do.

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