ISD’s Moustafa Ayad examines emerging tactics of young IS supporters

Moustafa Ayad, ISD’s Executive Director for AMEA, recently published an article in the CTC Sentinel, one of the premier counterterrorism publications.  

The piece, titled Teenage Terrorists and the Digital Ecosystem of the Islamic State, explores how a younger generation of supporters is beginning to take the reins of IS’s online presence. Moustafa investigates 93 unofficial Islamic State groups and media outlets operating across social media platforms and messaging apps. 

He breaks down how this new wave of IS supporters is innovating—using tactics like account hijacking, manipulating text analysis tools, and even watermarking propaganda with logos from well-known media outlets like CNN. 

Moustafa warns that those trying to counter this evolution need to move faster. 

“The toolbox of tactics deployed by the unofficial Islamic State outlets has changed, but the responses to them have not,” he writes. 

Read the full article here.