Digital Terror Crimes

Abstract

Terror actors operating within armed conflict have weaponized social media by using these platforms to threaten and spread images of brutality in order to taunt, terrify, and intimidate civilians. These acts or threats of violence are terror, a prohibited war crime in which acts or threats of violence are made with the primary purpose of spreading terror among the civilian population. The weaponization of terror content through social media is a digital terror crime.

This article argues that the war crime of terror applies to digital terror crimes perpetrated through social media platforms. It situates digital terror crimes within the existing jurisprudence on terror at ad hoc international and hybrid criminal tribunals. Terror is an autonomous war crime within international criminal law, but all previous convictions for terror have occurred within the context of an underlying criminal act. Digital terror crimes are different: The underlying act of social media use is not necessarily a war crime outside the crime of terror. In addition to examining the ways that digital terror crimes can be committed during armed conflict, this article considers the various actors who could be implicated in the perpetration and distribution of digital terror.

Keywords: war crimes, terror, terrorism, social media