On Tuesday, March 9th ,2021 a deliberation took place between students in Pennsylvania State Universities’ rhetoric and civic life honors course. The deliberation was hosted by students, Aidan Maguire, Arthur LeBan, Ryan Coughlan, Patrick Galvez, Peter Varghese, Michael Martinelli, Maryn McConkey, and Mariel Pearson. The topic of this debate centered around radicalization and the most effective approach and method towards deradicalizing individuals. Three sub-groups were created, and each focused their research on a different route on how to deradicalize radicals. These approaches were as follows, forceful deradicalization, targeting organizational recruitment through social media, and re-education using camps. Each of these approaches contained its own benefits and downsides although one approach was accepted more than the others and this approach was targeting recruitment through social media. Such support after immense deliberation supports the notion that increasing funding and centering resources around utilizing social media to deradicalize individuals is and will be the most efficient and effective measure. In addition, the deliberation brought up many themes that are often swept under the rug and not focused on enough in today’s society such as the need to investigate the mindset of individuals deemed to be radicals and the need to put greater resources into assisting individuals who are attempting to deradicalize.
It is important to first discuss the approach that the majority of deliberators supported. This approach centered around using social media sites and companies to cut radical groups attempts at recruitment off. By removing a primary source of recruitment and targeting these organizations at their core, less individuals would be subject to becoming radicals. In addition, this approach effectively slowed down the spread of misinformation, could be done on a large scale, was cost effective, and had a lot of the infrastructure already in place for this method to be conducted. One company that was focused on in particular and their attempts at targeting radical groups was Facebook. Facebook was one of the first social media platforms that worked towards a no-tolerance policy for posts deemed to be terrorist propaganda (Ward). This single policy allowed the company to more quickly and effectively remove explicit content from the site. In addition, entire groups of workers at Facebook were allocated to find, flag, and remove terrorist posted content. Doing so was extremely effective at limiting the recruitment power of terrorist recruitment power. During terrorist groups like ISIS’s early stages, they relied heavily on social media to garner support and member from individuals abroad. It is estimated that they gained over 40,000 members from 110 different countries just through the use of social media (Corera). Therefore, when companies like Facebook began removing ISIS content from their social media site, it limited the contact that ISIS could have in recruiting foreign nationals. This slowed ISIS new recruitment groups, and many have linked to why the group struggled in its latter years.
Out of the deliberation also came many core themes that were both directly and indirectly touched upon. One of these themes was the idea that individuals who join these radical groups need to be examined more for the mindset they possess that pushes them to join these organizations. Many of the deliberators asked questions and also posed questions about what motivates individuals to turn towards radical organizations and then themselves radicalize. Understanding this, as many pointed out, would be quintessential to limiting the number of people in the future who join radical groups and would also help identify individuals who may be at a heightened risk of radicalizing. In conjunction with this discussion, another theme emerged which discussed how people joining radical organizations who are then apprehended for their involvement are simply placed in jail. However, the radical individuals often continue to possess the same radical ideologies and mindset. Such has led to a disconnect, where these individuals are not re-educated and given another opportunity. A large part of this disconnect results from a lack of funding and knowledge about how to help these people. Consequently, many advocated for greater funding into this region.
There were many powerful conclusions that were drawn from one deliberation about the topic, and this pushes forward the idea that more discussions are needed. Radicalization and deradicalization are pressing topics in the twenty-first century and greater resource allocation and research must be done on the topic for an impact to be felt.
Works Cited:
Corera, Gordon. “ISIS ‘Still Evading Detection on Facebook’, Report Says.” BBC News, BBC, 13
July 2020, www.bbc.com/news/technology-53389657.
Ward, Antonia. “ISIS’s Social Media Use Poses a Threat to Stability in the Middle East and
Africa.” RAND Corporation, 11 Dec. 2018, www.rand.org/blog/2018/12/isiss-use-of-social-media-still-poses-a-threat-to-stability.html.