Structural Analysis of ISIS Supporter's Network on Tweeter: A Case Study

Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), the present article explored a network containing 7885 people and 9927 ties among Arab speaking ISIS supporters in Twitter. The aim of this research was to explore the structure of the relationship among previously mentioned users, investigating the advantages and disadvantages of this structure for ISIS, and identifying the key nodes based on centrality measures. Based on the findings of this study, the network of the Arab speaking ISIS supporters in Twitter during February and March 2019 consisted of a decentralized deep structure with a long diameter and clusters which had a week tie with one another and the whole network. This structure could lead to flexibility, stability and agility of the network and it could also preserve the anonymity of the key ISIS supporters. The researchers determined the nodes with the highest centrality scores, and divided the ISIS supporters into 3 distinctive groups: key users, connectors, and followers.