The face of twitter is being used for criminal activities, to promote and recruit illegal activities. This is being done by a Somali group calling themselves Al-Shabab (meaning “The Youth” in Arabic). With the usage of tweets, they spread the word of a takeover of the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi. With tweets, they had supporters help defend this mass-murder attack, along with mocking Kenyan officials. There were posts of pictures inside the mall and threatens of more possible bloodshed. Even after the closure of at least five Twitter accounts, new ones were made with different usernames soon after.
It is most likely that this criminal is motivated by the disinhibition of invisibility. These interactions are based fully off of twitter, requiring only exchanges of text rather than any physical interaction. They are trying to uncover the faults of the Kenyan government through this siege along with recruiting the support of others. All the twitter users supporting this attack cannot be seen and if their account is shut down, they can make new ones under new user names. Although there is a picture of the leader of Al-Shabab and audio recordings released by “the leader”, it is not even fully clear that this Ahmed Abdi Godane (aka Mukhtar Abu Zubair) is their leader due to the anonymity offered through the internet. For all we know, this could simply just be a face for the real leader to hide behind. This terrorist group is rising simply through the spread of their name and actions through Twitter, a simple social tool used by many.
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