Pop stars, sports teams and Hollywood actors aren’t
the only ones with global followings on Facebook. Jihadis, too, have lots of
rabid fans from around the world.
Where in the West are the biggest pockets of radical
Islam fans?
To find out, search for outspoken jihadis on
Facebook. There are a total of seven main
groups, covering a range of different countries. Then explore where the people who follow
those groups’ Facebook pages said they live.
As more jihadi groups use social networks to
proselytize and even communicate with one another, governments and
law-enforcement agencies halfway around the world are eager to know where the
receptive audiences are located.
Turns out, Europe houses many more jihadi fans than
the U.S. does.
Of the total 49,631 members in the groups we
selected, 1,463 identify themselves as coming from European countries, while
about 325 say they’re in the United States.
In Europe, the U.K. boasts 548 fans of the same
pages—and London, with 260 fans, is far and away the most, well-represented
city in the data.
The city of Paris came in a distant second.
Three of the four most, well-represented cities in
Europe are in the United Kingdom, with Birmingham and Manchester joining the
capital on the list.
The U.S. numbers are much smaller, with New York
City topping the city scales, and California taking the title for the state
where most people are active on the jihadi Facebook pages.
Of those Facebook jihadi fans, many express a strong
religious affiliation, citing the likes of Al Qaeda or Allah as their employer.
But despite a growing concern for privacy, and a near-ubiquitous trend for
Western employers using social media profiles to screen employees, a large
percentage of people who had liked extreme jihadi groups on Facebook did so
side-by-side with listings for their actual places of work and study in Western
countries.
They list themselves as attending well-to-do high
schools, Ivy League universities and military academies in the U.K., U.S. and
elsewhere.
They work at Google, Microsoft, Pizza Hut, JCPenney,
Aeropostale and other globally recognized businesses.
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