Black-boxing the Black Flag

This is a paper I co-wrote with a PhD student of mine, titled Black-boxing the Black Flag: Anonymous Sharing Platforms and ISIS Content Distribution Tactics, currently in peer review. We analyse ISIS’ use of anonymous sharing portals in its content distribution operations as part of a broader information warfare strategy focused on withstanding degrading attacks by popular social media portals. What is interesting about this paper is that we use a key notion from actor network theory – the black box – to conceptualise the role of anonymous sharing portals in the propaganda operations of distributed terrorist networks.