Gatestone Institute report warns terror groups using social media for recruitment and attacks

 

A report in the New York-based think tank Gatestone Institute has said that several terrorist organisations, including the Islamic State (ISIS), have exploited social media’s low-cost, fast, globally connected platforms for ideological propaganda, recruitment, mobilisation, and executing terror attacks.

 

The report said that through these platforms, the terror groups propagate extremist ideology, aiming for mass radicalisation by employing “emotional and psychological manipulation” to influence children as young as 12.

 

The report further said that cyber-enabled terrorism has become a critical national security issue for countries in the Indo-Pacific region, especially in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, the wider Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, where end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms and online recruitment have connected a substantial percentage of youths to terror networks.

 

According to the report, in the Indo-Pacific, ISIS, its sympathisers, and other fringe groups are leading such campaigns.

 

It highlighted that the pattern was evident both in Australia’s Bondi Beach attack on 14th of December in 2025, and the Red Fort attack in New Delhi on 10th of November in the same year, where social media platforms were “systematically weaponised to radicalise individuals” in carrying out terrorist attacks.