New study ranks “Top consumers of IS propaganda”

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

The top consumers of Islamic State videos were from Turkey, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Britain, which registered the largest number of clicks in Europe.

There is bad news and less bad news in the report, “The New Netwar,” from scholars led by Martyn Frampton at Queen Mary University of London.

Bad, in the sense that the Islamic State is pumping out more material than ever. Not so bad, in the sense that the numbers of people looking in any one country could be measured in the tens of thousands — and that big Internet companies might be able to limit what is available, should they choose or be forced to do so.

“We are certainly not winning the war online,” the report concludes. “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 the Islamic State is being driven from its territories in Syria and Iraq, the authors say “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 say the Islamic State has released 2,000 “official” videos.