Review article
https://doi.org/10.37458/nstf.25.2.7
The use of artificial intelligence within the Salafi-Jihadi ecosystem on Rocket.Chat: the unfolding of a new frontier for propaganda?
Alessandro Bolpagni
Abstract
During the last decades, Salafi-Jihadi groups have exploited the proliferation of social media to create a persistent and ideologically cohesive presence online. Yet, Salafi-Jihadi individuals connected online to form a new dispersed network of ‘media mujahedeen’ based on loose affiliations, moving from the ‘one-to-many’ to a ‘peer-to-peer’ structure described by Ali Fisher as the Swarmcast Model. The Swarmcast model can be adopted to understand the current media war held by media mujahedeen online. Given this context, experts observed a new centrality of non-institutional media houses, which spread jihadist propaganda and/or produce propaganda content. During the last decade, Telegram was Salafi-Jihadi organizations’ main messaging platform for both institutional and non-institutional media houses. However, in late November 2019, the 16th Referral Action Day coordinated by EUROPOL took place and forced Salafi-Jihadi propaganda operators to adopt what was described by Ali Fisher and Nico Prucha as the Multiplatform Communication Paradigm (MCP) to create a more resilient digital network. Among the messaging platforms, there was Rocket.Chat, which became their primary launchpad and digital safe haven. In late March, inside the Islamic State (IS) server on Rocket.Chat, the first massive use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was individuated, which was aimed at producing what can be described as a news broadcast in Arabic of IS’s wilayat operations all over the world made by a pro-IS non-institutional media house. The producer inserted all the main characteristics of news broadcasts created through the support of AI. From that day to now, the user posted ten different propaganda videos employing the same production techniques, albeit with some graphic and content differences. Against the backdrop of the evolution of Salafi-Jihadi communication that occurred in the last decades, this paper seeks to illustrate the use of AI inside IS’s server on Rocket.Chat and trace possible countermeasures to prevent using such technologies to produce Salafi-Jihadi propaganda.
Keywords
artificial intelligence, terrorism, Islamic State, Rocket.Chat, propaganda
Hrčak ID:
323899
URI
Publication date:
17.12.2024.
Visits: 0 *