The Spread of Terrorism Projected on Social Media: A Study of Youth’s Extremist Digital Behaviour

Abstract

The agenda for the kinetic domain, the second item on the updated National Action Plan 2021, is to combat terrorism disseminated by media (electronic, print and social) as well as the communications and cyber networks. Spread of terrorism projected on social media and extremist digital behavior is an emerging problem for Pakistani community, especially among adults and university-going students. Its use in YouTube, X (Twitter), TokTok, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, has resulted in numerous challenges in the society including concept of over exposure in the society through social networking causing extremist degital practices that promote political acts of terrorism. The purpose of this study is to investigate the misuse of the internet and social media for terrorism-related acts, especially those motivated by political extremism. Hypotheses were created to ascertain an important relationship between political extremism, the search for abusive information related to terrorism, and the digital behavior of young. The literature review encompasses social media and public policy, the influence of social networking on the political socialization of young, the connection between young people and violent extremism in the social media, and the utilization of social networking for political engagement. Its theoretical perspective includes social media-integration-theory-model, social learning theory and extremism as dogma within the worldview. A simple random sampling method was employed: The population consisted of students from the University of Sargodha, from whom a simple random sample of 392 was extracted. A questionnaire was developed for data gathering employing the survey research methodology. A descriptive analysis was performed using percentage distributions to evaluate perspectives on the dissemination of terrorism on social media. The hypothesis testing with the Chi-Square test yielded inconclusive findings. For H₁, which investigated the significant relationship between political extremism in youngster’s digital behavior, the p-value of 0.764, signifying no statistically significant relationship. Conversely, H₂, which evaluated the significant relationship between the pursuit of abusive information and extremist digital behavior, gave an output of p-value 0.043, indicating a statistically significant relationship. The findings indicate that several aspects of internet participation exhibit a stronger relationship with extreme attitudes than others. The basic remedies suggested are addressing the needs for online social norms, increasing the accountability for data handlers.