Day 54 – Q 3. How does social media lead to youth radicalisation? Examine the modus operandi?
3. How does social media lead to youth radicalisation? Examine the modus operandi?
सोशल मीडिया युवाओं के कट्टरता की ओर कैसे ले जाता है? मोडस ऑपरेंडी की जांच करें।
Introduction:
In today’s digitized world, People are well connected than ever before thanks to Mobile phones and internet penetration. With usage of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter world has turned from being ‘connected’ to ‘hyper-connected’.
Body:
While social media platforms have brought people, their ideas and experiences together, they have also been misused by anti-social elements to disturb peace in the world. Among many, radicalisation of youth through social media is one such misuse.
Radicalization is a process by which individual or group comes to take up a violent form of action. It is directly linked to an extremist ideology that contests the established order at the political, social or cultural level. People are susceptible to political (Right wing & Left wing), Religious, Psychological and Socio-Economic radicalization.
Radicalism has been used interchangeably with notions such as fundamentalism-religious approach, indoctrination-mental control, Jihad, extremism and terrorism, among others.
How social media leads to radicalisation:
- Social media platforms have become an active vector for violent radicalization.
- Extremist groups take advantages that stem from the very nature of Internet and social media channels like communication channels that are not bound to national jurisdictions and that are informal, large group, cheap, decentralized and anonymous
- This allows terrorists to network across borders and to bypass time and space. specifically, these channels provide networks of recruiters, working horizontally, in all the countries they target due to the trans-border nature of the Internet.
- With such wider reach, radical groups target vulnerable individuals- taking advantage of psychological factors like isolated people and those looking for belongingness and self-identity; appealing to their social grievances like inequality, discrimination and social exclusion; exploiting emotional attachment of people towards their religion.
- This would be done in several ways: Create appealing, interactive user-friendly platforms to attract younger audiences; Offer spaces where groups can maintain secret but highly democratic communication modes on the assumption that everyone can participate; Disseminate extremist, violent and criminal content, which would not be well received offine; Identify potential participants and provide them with information about ‘the cause’ and the groups involved in defending it; Deliver massive publicity for acts of violence and enhancing a perception of strength.
- Thus through propaganda and indoctrination, individuals are radicalized and they resort to violence to this achieve their end.
NOTE: You need to substantiate points with example.
Conclusion:
Going forward, efforts should be channelized to
- Make use of these new technologies-social media as a tool for preventing radicalization especially by making it possible to propose a counter-narrative on the Internet; to encourage citizen education and critical thinking; in support of human rights, dialogue, mutual understanding and tolerance;
- Follow multidimensional approach to analyze and prevent the root causes of radicalization.
Best answer: SID
