The Dark Side of Social Media

This past month seventeen of Osama bin Laden's final writings were made available by the Countering Terrorism Center at West Point after the raid that resulted in his death and captured the cache just over a year ago. The bin Laden documents are available here in both an English translation and Arabic for those that are up for a challenge.

The documents released to the CTC and available for public consumption are documents written by several authors that, as they recognize "cannot be ascertained whether any of these letters actually reached their intended destinations", due to the scattered methods of electronic storage they were extracted from.

However, these limitations should not detract from the value of these documents and the weight they placed on incorporating media strategies into their strategic political calculus. Networks like al-Qaeda and its affiliates, though violent, are savvy to the nature of modern media markets and how news is consumed. Osama bin Laden writes in one of the most recent document released, dated to May 2010, to Shaykh Mahmud 'Atiyya. The recipient of his letter was the designated successor of Sheikh Sa'id, the nom de guerre of Mustafa Abdu'l-Yazid, who served as a primary actor within al-Qaeda Central (AQC).

Throughout the letter bin Laden remonstrates against the excesses of al-Qaeda affiliates and the urgent need to concentrate media relations under a single charge within AQC.

This brother would be in charge of the media as is the case in the regions - otherwise the position of the General Manager of the Media divisions in every region; no publications would be made unless he reviews them, to include the leadership speeches. He would have the right to stop any publication that includes a term considered outside the general policy, whether in the context or timing. 

Here, bin Laden  supports the centralization of media relations and hopes to bestow upon this new position of the General Manager of the Media decision making capacity to limit the autonomy of regional affiliates. Is this a shrewd or sensible decision on the part of bin Laden to centralize control of messaging when operation aspects remain in the hands of regional affiliates?

The operational drive for message cohesion stems from bin Laden's desire to correct misperceptions about the al-Qaeda network and begin an outreach campaign through media channels to change this.

Committing to the general lines, designed according to the Shari'ah policy in our Jihadist operations and our media publications is an extremely important issue; it will achieve... great gains for the Jihadist movement - most importantly gain the crowds of the nation, correct the wrong impressions in the minds of the Mujahidin.

In so many words, bin Laden is attempting a public image campaign after many years of strife and bloodshed worldwide that had left the reputation of the al-Qaeda network in tatters. Tarrow's cycles of contention provides an excellent framework by which to analyze the current wave of protests throughout the Arab speaking world. The Arab Spring has given al-Qaeda no media boost and has raised questions of the network's ideology and its political and social relevance in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The media strategies imagined by bin Laden before his death resemble an effort to retain centralized control of messaging from the periphery of a networked organization. The wishes he expressed might have been detached from the technical reality of where messaging and digital activity resided within the Jihadist movement. As increasingly individuals turn to message boards and networks embrace social media to relay information that might otherwise have first been released to broadcast media sources, such as claiming credit for a bombing campaign.