February 05, 2010
Report on al Qaeda's Invasion of Facebook
Despite calls from al Qaeda's online battalions to "invade Facebook", Murad Batal Al-shishani searches and doesn't find that many of them using the social networking tool.
The author has searched Facebook using keywords such as "jihad," "al-Qaeda," "al-Zarqawi," "Bin Laden," etc. and found a number of pro-al-Qaeda groups (“groups” on Facebook are applications created by users with common interests, fan-bases, advocates of a cause, etc). The author found that the number of members in these groups, which use names such as "Zarqawi," "al-Jihad al-Rayyan," "al-Qaeda," "Yusuf al-Batar battalion," etc. range from 50 to 150; however, groups using the name "Osama bin Laden," (there is more than one) tend to have more members, sometimes in excess of 400.But one wonders what search terms were left out, and if groups such as United Muslim Ummah, run by a cadre of US and British al Qaeda fans made the cut? That group alone has 7,000+ fans.
Yeah, that's not a problem.
By Rusty Shackleford, Ph.D. at 04:42 PM |
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