1) The study examined how Florida State University students receive and perceive terrorism-related information on social media. 2) Surveys found that 57% of students first learned of the 2015 Paris attacks via social media, and over half see multiple news articles about terrorism on social media daily. 3) While many students feel uneasy about terrorists using social media, nearly half believe social media sites should broadcast terrorism news, but the government should not block related posts or profiles.

1. Fear on Campus: Does Social
Media Promote Terrorism?
Team 4 members:
Jan Fuller
Julia Brunner
Alexandra Braun
Michael Hoff
Monte VanDyke
Mitchell Gayne

2. Research Problem
Does social media have
an impact on how people
receive information
regarding terrorists
attacks and events and
how they react seeing it
on social media?
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3. Significance/Purpose of Study
Social media has taken on a very prominent role in the everyday lives of Americans in the past decade,
specifically for college students acknowledging the feudal cruelty and overactive use of social media
through cyber terrorism.
According to a study done by the Pew Research Center (2014), there is evidence that prove that “89% of
people aged 18-29 use social networking sites”.
Terrorists are known for utilizing the social media platforms to spread fear and anxiety, for example, the
viral footage of the executing of James Foley on YouTube and other media websites.
It is evident the Islamic organization, ISIS, made everyone curious about the 90,000 social messages with
real footage of the damage the United States done in Iraq and Afghanistan that leaked from their
official Twitter pages.
Well-known newscast websites, such as CNN and FOX news, usually report on terrorist activity, which is
then broadcasted all over social media. Consistent with the PRC study (Gao 2015), about “61% of this
generation that use the internet look to Facebook to get their political news”.
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4. Research Questions
1. How often do FSU students get terrorism related
information via social media?
2. How do they perceive the terrorism-related information?
3. What do they think about regulating social media
regarding terrorism-related information?
4

5. Data collection methods and overview of
the research instrument development
Surveys developed using qualtrics & distributed via social media and
class rosters within the IT/ICT community at Florida State.
Surveys aimed at understanding where and how college students feel
about the impact on social media as well as understanding the
expansion of terrorism in today’s world.
Distributed via Facebook, class roster
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6. Population, sample, and sampling techniques:
Recruitment strategy and process
We focused on FSU students that came from a
variety of majors, colleges, and age groups.
A survey was used for our voluntary sampling
technique. We were able to spread our
survey link through social media and email.
We were able to access a large demographic
through the use of the survey link and the
sharing feature through Facebook. This
method resulted in a total of 73 completed
surveys. 6
51
Null 4
2222

7. RQ1: How often do FSU students get terrorism related information via social media?
How did you first find out about the Paris Terrorist attacks that occurred on
November 13, 2015?
# Answer Bar Response %
1 Social Media 0.56521739130435 39 57%
2 Television 0.11594202898551 8 12%
3 Newspaper 0 0 0%
11 Google 0 0 0%
12 Friend / Colleague 0.057971014492754 4 6%
13 Family 0.043478260869565 3 4%
14 Mobile Alert / Application 0.08695652173913 6 9%
15 Other 0.1304347826087 9 13%
Total 69 100%
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8. RQ1: How often do FSU students get terrorism related information via social media?
We asked if you think “cyber
terrorism” is a threat on a scale from
0 to 10.
How many time have you ever seen
news articles about terrorism or
terrorist attacks on your social media
feed?
Out of 58 people the average
response was a 6.91
8
33
people
23
1

9. RQ2: How do they perceive terrorism-related information?
What are your feelings about terrorists
using social media to recruit members
to their cause?
38% of respondents had overall
negative feelings
14% of respondents reported feeling
scared
17% of respondents acknowledged
that this was a smart tactic
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Some responses from our survey
“It makes me uneasy”
“I find it absolutely terrifying”
“I think it’s awful but easy for them to
do.
“I am not a terrorist, but there are
plenty of idiots on the internet so it’s a
good strategy”
“It’s bad”
“People are twisted”
“Very good idea of then. Modernization”
“I feel that it is wrong and unlawful”

10. RQ2: How do they perceive the terrorism-related information?
Should social media broadcast news
about terrorism on the internet?
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11. RQ2: How do they perceive terrorism-related information?
How threatened did you feel about the
possibility of a terrorist attack occurring on
U.S. soil after seeing coverage of recent
attacks?
Do you think that
terrorists disguise
their plans on the
internet?
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12. RQ 3: How do students think of regulating social media regarding terrorism
related information?
49% of students believe social media should broadcast news about terrorism on the
internet.
48% of students believe the government should not have the responsibility of blocking
social media posts published by terrorists.
48% of students are seeing multiple news articles regarding terrorist activity on their social
media platform and 12% are seeing it once or less.
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13. RQ 3: How do students think of regulating social media regarding terrorism
related information?
“Social media sites should monitor profiles”
“They should use that information to track the terrorists”
“Take down their social media sites so they can no longer use them”
Overall, from this open-ended
question asking what people think
we should do to combat terrorists
using social media, responses
were similar across the board that
it is up to the social media
company to take control of the
situation.
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14. Discussions & Implications
The world has gotten smaller as a result of social media:
“89% of people aged 18-29 use social networking sites and 75% of those groups are using it to obtain news
stories and current event information” (Pew 2014, p.13)
47% of users comment on checking their social media more than ten times per day and 68% use check it at least 6
times per day
57% of people found out about the Paris Attacks via social media, with T.V. coming in at 12% and other being 13%
Our data supports this notion of a smaller world due to social media, as almost half of respondents reported to use
social media at least 6 times per day and more than half used it to hear about other reported terrorist attacks.
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15. Discussions & Implications
Connection between fear & social media:
“Social media has become an ideal platform to spread fear through terrorism because of its
availability to anyone who has access to the internet” (Wu, 2015).
68% found cyberterrorism to be a legitimate threat.
48% were scared of an attack happening on U.S. soil after seeing relevant stories on their social media.
Social media does in fact increase the amount of fear in users when used by terrorists to broadcast ulterior 15

16. Discussions & Implications
Terrorism and Social Media Regulation:
“No one nation owns the internet so blocking messages of terrorism has been difficult without global cooperation..
The problem with this is that the amount of data that would have to be sorted through to find messages of terrorism is
enormous. Also, there is not one single definition of terrorism which makes regulating it problematic because there is no
official way to differentiate it from other internet posts ” (Wu, 2015).
“48% of people found that it was okay for social media to post terrorist related stories
Only 26% of users thought that gov. should block these profiles/stories
Our research supports the notion that users don’t feel that the government should block these posts/stories, as
there is not a way to really combat this without infringing on peoples rights.
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17. Conclusion
This study was provided to give you a viewpoint to understand the
nature and capability of an emerging threat against the college
community through social media.
This presentation was also brought to you to help other college
students to be more aware for their protective measures and
to be considerate about the concern of a current, developing
threat to the younger generation dealing with cyber terrorism.
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18. Reflecting of Research
There is a good size population willing to do surveys to help out
other classmates having well over 75 responses (using
online survey using volunteer sampling).
Qualtrics gathers information and displays it in a great way that
is easy to read and use for observation
Important to communicate with group members to make sure
everything is getting done in an effective way as there was a
lot to do. 18