Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the opening day of the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism in Israel. Speakers included academics, politicians, ambassadors, UN representatives, London police and more. All talking about terrorism in our modern world and ways of quelling it.
Israel, in their owns words, ‘lives in a tough neighbourhood’, so they’ve been focusing on the safety of their people and thwarting terror attacks for some time. The rest of the world had to start paying closer attention after September 11, the Bali bombings, the London Tube bombings, Madrid, the Lindt siege; the list goes on.
One of the themes of the summit was “it takes a network to bring down a network”, highlighting the necessity of working together to better respond to this horror that is pervading our way of life. A network that was constantly asked by presenters to become a better weapon in the fight were the big social media networks. Behemoths such as Facebook, Google and YouTube are free to join and use and as such, are accessed by an astronomical number of people each day. It is no wonder that they are such attractive outlets to spread terrorist propaganda – their reach and ease of use is breath-taking.
Read the full article by Judith Whitfield at The Newcastle Herald.