How to counter the Islamic State on Twitter

The social media forays of the Islamic State (IS) range from the jarringly adolescent to sophisticated advertising campaigns meant to portray extremism as a normal lifestyle decision.

These include Twitter feeds aimed at women, with pictures of kittens and designer shoes tweeted alongside jihadist rhetoric and snapshots of children in IS fan gear, “much as children are dressed in favorite football team jerseys,” notes Christina Schori Liang, senior fellow in the Emerging Security Challenges program at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

While these efforts have prompted popular movements to oppose the IS message, including online vigilante groups of women known as the Anonymisses, the US government has been grappling mightily with how it, too, can counter IS rhetoric in the social media realm.

Read the full article at The Christian Science Monitor.