“Terrorist Bots: How Islamic State has Automated Management of its Online Community on Telegram”, 4 April 2023

Introduction

This Insight is a summary of our recent article for Terrorism and Political Violence, in which we used network science to shed light on one such example: how the Islamic State (IS) exploits bots on Telegram to coordinate sympathisers, curate their community, and amplify their propaganda. 

Our findings indicate that IS employs bots as part of a deliberate and sophisticated strategy, in keeping with its reputation as technologically forward-thinking. Indeed, our conclusions suggest that the labour-saving power of bots has been instrumental in growing and managing such a large online community of terrorist sympathisers. 

Findings

Analysis of the dataset suggests that bots play a systemic role in IS’s online communications ecosystem. Specifically, within the community that was examined, bots perform three key and distinct functions. The first was to publish, promote and amplify IS content and propaganda, whether in the form of news updates, images, videos or articles. The second function was to moderate discussions within Telegram channels and groups. The third was administering groups, including permitting access to new members and blocking violators of group policies.

Conclusion

Demonstrably, the network analysed here is not organized by a single person or controlling authority but formed incrementally, at least partly in a self-organised manner, by loosely connected groups of IS supporters. This corresponds to the broader decentralised character of IS influence activities. This network quality has been cultivated because it makes it exceptionally difficult to localise and break down the ecosystem in a sustained and effective manner.

On Telegram, anyone can create and manage a bot. This means that users can deploy bots to do most of the activities that human users can do: post content, receive messages, manage groups, provide services, and even accept payments. As with many digital capabilities, that means they are a double-edged sword. They can automate tedious work and improve efficiency for legitimate users. But malign organisations can derive the same benefits. Both government security agencies and social media platforms should take note, and explore what more can be done to limit their use as a tool of both IS and other terrorist groups.     

It is important to keep in mind – to foreground, even – that this is not a problem for Telegram alone. Although Telegram is one of many platforms used by malign actors today, in recent years it has proven to be one of the most forward-thinking in terms of strategic network disruption – something that should be commended. Moreover, we must also bear in mind that bots and other advanced social media capabilities are used, in the vast majority of cases, for benign or entirely positive means. For that reason, efforts to mitigate their malicious use must be more sophisticated than blunt disruption activities or calls for their being wholesale disabled as a functionality. Instead, it is critical that interventions are limited to the problem set they are trying to address, research-led, and, above all, accurately targeted.