2 ISIS Opponents Outnumber Supporters Approximately 6:1“Daesh” (داعش) and “Islamic State” (الدولة الإسلامية) can differentiate ISIS opponents and supporters ISIS opponents more numerous but less active than supporters (40 vs. 60 Tweets/day) Number of supporters drops March to May 2015 23 Million Tweets 4.5 Million ISIS Tweets 75,946 users 18.8 million Daesh Tweets 471,492 users Moath al-Kasabeh burning video released Note opponents increase and supporters decrease Opponents Tweeting/day Supporters Tweeting/day Baseline: Entire database of 23 million Tweets (383 million words) Construct Islamic State (DAESH) sample by extracting all Tweets from all users where >80% of their Tweets contains at least one of the “Islamic State” (“DAESH”) phrase “Islamic State” formal and respectful; originated with Caliphate announcement DAESH, acronym formed from the letters of the name in Arabic, "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham” is pejorative Islamic State: 4.5 million tweets, 67 million words, 75,946 users DAESH: 18.8 million tweets, 316 million words, 471,492 users Same ratio supported by ….

3 Who Is Participating in ISIS DebateWho Is Participating in ISIS Debate? Community Detection Identified Four Broad Communities 23 Million Tweets from 771,327 Users Network: 771,321 users and 3,336,589 mentions 21,442 communities, largest 127K members 36 communities > 100 members 4 meta-communities Node color indicates meta-community Node size indicates community size Very large Large Moderate Small Edge color indicates relative number of tweets between communities 21,442 communities, each viewed as a node, with the edges between communities aggregating all of the conversations between the members of those communities

4 Sunni Community Characterized by Nationalist Sub-CommunitiesPotential Message Themes Saudi Arabia ISIS Support and Expansion in SA; Threat to Islam posed by Iranian Shiism, secular nationalism, int’l community Egypt Nationalism; ISIS Opposition; Mistrust of Brotherhood; Frustration with U.S. policies Jordan Nationalism; Moath al-Kasabeh; Support for Int’l air campaign Libya Nationalism; ISIS Opposition; Distrust of Libyan politicians, militants and west Yemen ISIS Support; Critical of KSA intervention

5 Geo-Tagged Data Confirm Sunni Sub-Community LocationsJordanian Community Libyan Community 111 14 Jordan 229 Saudi 28 323 GCC Egypt Libya Egyptian Community

6 Connections between Communities Reveal Key ParticipantsSyrian mujahedeen meta- community is important for its position between ISIS supporters and (possibly) more moderate Sunni communities May serve an important influence node to ISIS supporters ISIS provocateur community has outsized participation in debate, but likely little influence Hurling insults unlikely to change minds of committed ISIS supporters ISIS Provocateurs Only including connections between communities with more than 2000 mentions removes noise Normalizing for community size highlights key connections between communities Edge arrows indicate direction and relative number of mentions between communities Node color indicates meta-community

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