Beyond Closing Mosques and Shutting Down Facebook Pages: How Tunisia Can Address the Threat of Online and Offline Terrorist Recruitment

Abstract

Tunisian nationals make up the largest number of foreign fighters affiliated with ISIS in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. As ISIS gains a stronger grip in neighboring Libya, the issue of youth radicalization in Tunisia is more pressing than ever. ISIS is highly effective and organized in using social media platforms to recruit foreign and local fighters across national borders. The paper examines ISIS’s use of sophisticated online propaganda strategies to recruit young Tunisians and proposes concrete ways to improve the government’s thus far lackluster response. Fighting the online and offline recruitment efforts of terrorist groups should include not only monitoring online content that incites violence but also more constructive measures such as building platforms to connect government with the population, from using social media to encourage civic engagement to crowdsourcing in policy making.