Isis: Hundreds of Americans 'sympathise with terror group' on Twitter, study finds

New report reveals most Isis supporters in the US tend to be men, with an average age of 26

An Isis propaganda video purporting to show fighters near the Iraqi city of Tikrit (AFP/Getty)

Several hundred American people are using social media platforms such as Twitter to spread messages of support and instigate recruitment for Isis, a new study has revealed.

The report, 'Isis in America: From Retweets to Raqqa', was been released by George Washington University’s programme on extremism.

It analysed the social media accounts and legal documents of more than 300 Isis activists and sympathisers in the US for a period of six months, and found: those users have an average age of 26, 14 per cent are female, two out of every five are Muslim converts and more than half have either travelled or tried to travel abroad.

The study also revealed that while many American Isis supporters use private messaging apps, open forums and the dark web, they are almost overwhelmingly drawn to Twitter - where there is a thriving “American Isis Twitter scene”, the Guardian reported.

According to the report:

• Nearly 1/3 of the tracked accounts are purportedly operated by women. ƒ
• Most American Isis supporters online communicate in English. ƒ
• Many accounts use avatars of black flags, lions, and green birds (a symbol of martyrs). ƒ
• Avatars also feature Americans arrested on terrorism charges, killed waging jihad abroad, or committing attacks in the US.

The researchers also found that being suspended on Twitter had become a so-called “badge of honour”. According to the report, American supporters "spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game".

In order to identify the accounts, researchers looked at those who self-identified as being American, while also using Twitter's geo-location tagging tool, the use of the words "the American" in Arabic on Twitter bios, and language, spelling and cultural references.

They then broke down the selected Twitter accounts into three categories: nodes - leading voices who create most of the pro-Isis content; amplifiers - who tend only to retweet and “like” material from popular users; and shout-out accounts - who have the largest followings on Twitter. The last group was responsible for introducing new, pro-Isis accounts to the community and actively promoting new accounts created by previously-suspended users.

One example, as outlined by the Guardian, was the case of newlyweds Mohammad Oda Dakhlalla, 22, who was about to start studying at graduate school, and his 19-year-old wife, Jaelyn Delshaun Young, a chemistry student and the daughter of a police officer.

The couple planned a secret honeymoon to travel to Syria to join Isis, but their radical activity on Twitter attracted the attention of the FBI and they were arrested earlier this year.

Lorenzo Vidino, the co-author of the report, told the Guardian: “It is an internet community with different roles and personalities, just like you have a community of Justin Bieber fans.

“They’re getting better and better at it and there’s much more coordination than we thought."

A total of 56 people have so far been arrested in the US in 2015 due to Isis-related activities, the IB Times reported.

And while most had been radicalised online, the report said a number of US extremists "cultivated and later strengthened their interest in Isis's narrative through face-to-face relationships - in most cases online and offline dynamics complement one another".

The study, however, concluded that the presence of US sympathisers online is "significantly smaller, more decentralised, and less professional than that of most European countries".