Garissa University Shootings and Social Media
*Disclaimer* due to the heated debates that occurred on
social media over this topic I have included several screenshots of direct
quotes from news comment forums to illustrate my point. A handful of them
contain harsh language and …in reality it was hard to find many that didn’t...
On April second, an attack by
Al-Shabab gunmen in Garissa, a Kenyan university dorm left 147 dead and another
79 wounded, (Source). Collins Wetangula, a survivor, mentioned that these Islamic extremists
specifically targeted Christians saying “If you were a Christian, you were shot
on the spot”. The gunmen also were chanting “’Sisi ni al-Shabab’ – Swahili for
‘We are al-Shabab’” as they raided the dorm. The initiator of the attack was
named to be Mohamed Kuno, “a headmaster at a madrassa, or Islamic school, in
Garissa Kenya until 2007….he joined the militant group Hizbul Islam, which in 2010
merged with al-Shabab”(Source).
This attack marks the fourth in a row, having been a radical Islamic attack
every month so far in 2015.
This tragic attack however has had
an interesting response over social media outlets everywhere. Instead of
sympathy for the fallen, most of the emotional responses range from intense rage
and racist commentary, to battles about religion, and others intellectually trying
to understand the extremists and circumstances. In all cases however, there has
been a lot of misleading information. Making it extremely time consuming to
shift through news stories, posts, and links in order to find credible sources
to back up the facts that are being claimed.
Let’s take a moment and look at the
background of Islamic extremists, to better understand the physical context. Radical
Islam can be seen not only as a religion but a culture, political ideology, and
in several ways a form in which to distribute power. Within it the leaders are
often highly educated, such as the case with this Kenyan University attack. A
former CIA counterterrorism specialist, Marc Sageman, found that, in terms of
terrorist recruitment, it is a middle class phenomenon. “This result was
confirmed in Britain by the MI5 report, which found that two-thirds of the
terror suspects…were ‘from middle or upper-middle-class backgrounds”(Source).
These facts shine an entirely different light on the situation, as social media
outlets such as “Reddit” and “Facebook” try to push the idea that the majority
of their recruitment comes from the poor and uneducated that are easily
brainwashed, which does not seem to be the case.
This then brings up several
questions as to how, if they come from decent backgrounds, can so many turn to
violent terrorism? Rik Coolsaet a Belgian scholar, leading studies based on
Muslim Radicalization found that “Religious orthodoxy starts from a quest for
identity…Political radicalization starts from opposition to injustice. The
former can develop into a challenge for social cohesion….a smaller number eventually
ends up in using violence as their preferred tool of political action” ( Source ). Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, also brings up the point that
“Apologists would tell us that militant Islam is a distortion of Islam, but
that is not true; it emerges out of the religion, constituting a radically new
interpretation” (Source).
A UN report claims that “More than
25,000 foreign fighters from 100 nations have travelled to join militant groups
such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State...The number of foreign fighters worldwide
has soared by 71% between the middle of 2014 and March 2015” (Source).
The UN utilized social media in order to look into threats by and recruitment
of those involved in the Islamic State.
After attending “finishing schools” in Syria and Iraq, these foreign
fighters are then scattered all over the world. In a study done by the Gallup
organization they found that “Jihadist teorrism became a phenomenon in the West
starting in the early 1990s as an extreme political response to the presence of
Western soldiers in Islamic lands”(Source).
In an article done by the bbc (Source)
they focused on one Radical Islamist fighter who escaped into Syria while on
bail, Siddartha Dhar, who had spoken openly about his support for Radical Islam
and defended brutality saying “Now that we have this caliphate, I think you’ll
see many Muslims globally seeing it as an opportunity for the Koran to be fully
realized”.
Bringing all this back to the
horrific Kenyan dormitory attack, it’s clear that the idea of radical Islamic
groups are in fact taking opportunities to fully realize the brutal aspects of
the Korans doctrine. Being utilized as both a tragic display of force, as well
as religious persecution.
An al-Shabab spokes man, Sheik Ali
Mohamud Range, told the press over the phone that the attack happed because
“Al-shabab considers Kenya an enemy in part because the country sent troops to
Somalia in 2011 to fight the group”( http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/70-killed-hundreds-rescued-after-kenya-university-attack-by-al-shabab-militants/2015/04/02/0c554516-d951-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html
).
Looking at it from the aspect of
religious persecution, it has been found by( Source )that “
Approximately
70% of Kenyans are Christians…6% are Muslim”. With the dominant religion being
Christianity, this attack by the minority religion holds a lot of weight. Also to the radical Muslim communities
Christianity is often associated with the west, a force trying to invade their
lands. Therefore this attack illustrates Rick Coolsaets argument that these acts of terrorism are a statement of political
action, as well as a display of power.
In terms of emotional and social
response resulting from this story, social media played a particularly
interesting role. The news stories that did cover the story did so broadly and
briefly. A few paragraphs were dedicated to the stricken and devastated community,
friends and families of those lost. Yet that was about the extent of the social
media response in terms of focusing on those impacted by this attack.
While the story was breaking there
was a lot of incorrect facts that were being spread. So several of the social
media interactions were initially trying to dig out the real story and weed out
misleading ideas. Shortly after these responses however “thought germs” quickly
spread. Thought germs being when those on the internet begin to heatedly argue
with an opposing idea, and like minds stick together to bash the opposing view.
This became very prevalent as arguments against religion, racism, politics,
took storm in the aftermath of this shooting.
Several people began to argue about different facts and viewpoints, even
utilizing facts of this tragic case to move their own personal agendas forward.
First,
when the story broke there were several incorrect facts being spread across
social media outlets. An example of this comes from a discussion forum on reddit.com
(Source)
As you can see the comments are ranked by “Up votes” in
which people may raise a comment up or sink it down “down votes”. This
misinformation was quickly raised to the top of the forum, while the correct information
was not even given 1/10th of the same attention. Therefore illustrating how social media can
quickly spread incorrect facts, and while there are often those who weed out
the false information it receives far less attention.
In
the light of the Kenyan University shooting, many on social media rushed into
heated debates about religion also. Upon reading through the comments and posts
on this attack, the arguments about religion were by far the most prevalent. Several
comments, rather intense and even appalling in nature, created debates that ran
on for pages. Yet overall, there appeared
to be a split as one side attacked Islam, and others tried to defend it. Such
as this example from (Source ).
Others
taking opportunities to focus on ideas of Christian persecution. As well as the
negative actions the Christians have taken in the past. Thus comments ranged
from,
to
And everything in-between. Even
still others took this time to shine light on how all religion brings nothing
but violence. Though in most cases these arguments did nothing to help those in
Kenya or really idea to a change. Emotional responses in terms of religion,
were largely hateful more than anything as each fought to put their two cents
in. Religion however was not the only topic up for debate. Politics, and
pushing personal agendas played a huge role within the arguments over social
media too.
While news outlets took to avoiding this aspect,
focusing more on the attack itself. A majority of the social media response
from the general public took the path of blaming the American government for the
attack occurring in the first place. Several took advantage of this attack strategy
to specifically target President Barack Obama. One example of this comes from a forum under "Big Story's" coverage of the story (Source). Stating things like;
Even taking it a step further on social media outlet, Twitter, (Source),as to claim that Obama was related to the mastermind of the Kenyan attack, Mohamed Kuno.
Along these lines, while there was outrage that America had not done enough to prevent the attack it soon turned to looking at what was being done politically in the aftermath. In terms of looking government action there were several that felt like the US government had not done enough. Those on the Sky News forum (Source) forum brought up ideas like:
Therefore, while the outrage is
clear, and there those that question what kind of precautions can be made so
tragic events such as these do not occur again, it seems like most of the
burden fell on America. Hardly anything was said throughout social media on the
actions of the Kenyan government in the aftermath of the University shooting, nor
was there much in terms of discussions on what could be done to aide them.
Rather most of the commentary was centered towards Obama and the lack of
government aide. This caused emotional responses of nationalism outrage and
arguments on how America should or should not be a part of every country
suffering terror attacks stemming from religious and political unrest.
The political concerns did not quite end here
however, there were some who even took this attack to forward their own
political agendas. Such as interactions that occurred on the comment section of
the National Post’s (Source)
coverage of the story. When Liberal Canadian politician Justin Trudeau came
under attack for supporting Islam because he wants the Muslim vote. 
There were no reliable sources to
back up these claims. However, it shows that even in the midst some on social
media take opportunities to shift stories to meet their own agendas.
Overall looking at the
psychological and social contexts, there was a large amount of content to shift
through. The comments of the general public brought forth far more information
and debates than the news stories did. Making this story more directed to
citizen journalism and they took and twisted the story in several different
ways. However while there were emotional
responses concerning true facts, religion and politics this attack was more
used as a small point in a larger argument. It opened the floodgates to
personal “thought germs” but never really focused on the attack itself and
those impacted by it. Leaving the emotional response to be more of anger about
the broader aspects of it rather than sympathy for the act of terror itself.
In regard to temporal reactions this story unfortunately has little to no impact. The Kenyan University attack was covered the front page news of a few large news sources for a few hours on the day it happened, April 2nd 2015. While others covered it even more briefly, a citizen of the UK noted on a Sky News forum (Source)that they were
In the days after the attack, while families and the community were still grieving. Yet, unless one had heard about it previously and searched for it, the story was nowhere to be found. Just another horrific attack that was buried after it's five minutes of “viral” spotlight. The debates the stemmed from the story did hold steam for a frew days after the attack but as people got tired of either arguing in circles, or agreed with one another those died out too. Though it did not lend much to the story itself and it quickly fell into the background while the debates heated up on other topics. In conclusion, acts of terror like this, stemming from radical islam no longer really reach the general public on a large scale. Even if we do happen to catch the story while it is hot, we have become desensatized to them. Even the debates the stem from it leave the actual story behind and focus on a broader scale. However with such a huge response from social media, it’s clear that a paradigm shift is wanted in terms of stopping terror, but we would need to remove the extreme emotional biases, and come up with logical solutions for any change to start. This, however is unfortunatly likely a long way off.
No comments:
Post a Comment