The Biggest Global Audiences For Jihadist Web Content

A UK based think tank has found that the so-called Islamic State's online presence has been "significantly overstated" with the group continuing to churn out over 100 new articles, videos and newspapers every week. It is also still managing to distribute its propaganda across a vast ecosystem of platforms including social media, file-sharing services and encrypted messaging platforms. The research found that the United States is the second biggest consumer of that extremist content after Turkey.

The study managed to determine that by analyzing "shortlinks", that shorten URLs to facilitate sharing. Providers of these services include goo.gl and bit.ly and they aggregate data on how many times a link is clicked in a different country, allowing for a geographic overview of where internet users are accessing extremist content. As can be seen from the following infographic, Turkey comes first overall with 16,810 clicks between mid-February and early May 2017. As mentioned above, the United States came second with 10,388 clicks while Saudi Arabia rounded off the top three with 10,239. The United Kingdom was fifth overall and had the biggest audience in Europe with 6,107 clicks.