Thanks to everyone who commented on the latest article that Jarret and I published in Foreign Policyon how the online militant Islamist world has been increasingly “gamifying” their users’ experiences. This post will respond to some of the analysis offered by Jihadica’s Will McCants and J.M. Berger over at Intelwire.
The purpose of our FP piece was to offer a more developed lens for understanding a series of trends that counterterrorism analysts have been anecdotally observing for some time. It’s no surprise that gaming techniques make mundane activities more fun. Nor is it a surprise that they have been implicitly present within the online jihadist movement for years. Where our article advances the conversation is by showing the ways in which English-language militant Islamist forums are now explicitly integrating game mechanics into the structure of their online architecture. The obvious implication of systematically employing these mechanics into the forums is that it offers users a more engaging experience, which means they will spend more time on the forums talking about more things related to militancy.
McCants brings an important perspective to the article. For McCants, our gamification framework applied less well to Awlaki. We agree. We don’t see Awlaki as having gamified his blog with the same intentionality or transparency that frequent flier miles, for instance, may encourage consumers to accept sub-optimal flight schedules in order to earn elite status. The beauty of Awlaki’s approach is how intuitive and organic it seemed to be: he created a gamified system without really even trying. Awlaki didn’t need expressly defined prizes, like most forums have today. Instead, Awlaki made himself the prize and his lectures the virtual currency to gather, exchange and discuss.
Berger usefully expands on a point we had made in his response by arguing that when an individual gets closer to violent action, they start losing “rep power” and influence in the forums. This is an issue that needs to be explored further. I don’t think the example of Zachary Chesser works in this case, however, as Berger contends. Berger correctly notes that Chesser was eventually banned from the Islamic Awakening forum and moved most of his online presence to Al Qimmah. However, Al Qimmah also employs game mechanics, as do other sites Chesser was active on before his arrest, including Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum. Of course Al Qimmah and Ansar are far more militant sites than Islamic Awakening, but the point is that users will find the appropriate site to express their extremist ideologies – and almost all of these sites employ game mechanics to encourage increased user participation.
Berger also reports that after Chesser’s arrest, Islamic Awakening members “hosted a roast,” which I would argue is a major exaggeration. Even the post Berger uses as an example, where a user accuses Chesser of having “loose lips,” the user ends his post by saying “Make dua for him and I'm going to see if his wife/child are doing ok.” Despite accusations that Chesser was not wise in the way he spoke, most users still assumed he was innocent and encouraged others to pray for him and his family. That being said, I still think Berger’s argument deserves more thought and I plan to explore it further.
I want to thank everyone again for their comments. This article has opened up some great discussions and I hope we continue to debate and explore these issues further. Most importantly, I hope that we can go forward with this new framework and develop it into an argument that will help us both understand and combat virtual extremism crossing over into violence.
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