I
use the Scalar platform to trace how ISIS creates deadly
geographies around the world through its “terror talks.” This project will
analyze how these deadly spaces are created—cyber space/geography through
social media, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (the processes of blogging, hacking, tweeting etc.) It is interesting and at the same time emotionally
challenging to trace the history of ISIS’s deadly violent propaganda, and how
it terrorize the cyber space and create deadly geographies within it. And it
uses a media strategy as aggressive as its military tactics to extend its
influence around the world and adopts the most violent tactics for propaganda
such as beheadings. It is surprising that online jihadists adapted very fast to
the migration from internet chat forums to social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. ISIS is also strategically very successful in creating
its own secluded extremist forums, hierarchies and trusted inner circles. I
draw on Michael Taussig’s theory to gain a scholastic understanding of my
project. To use Taussig’s words from “Terror as Usual,” there are “terror
talks” circulating about the dangers of the deadliness of ISIS. Thus my paper looks forward to promote a scholarly
conversation about how these kinds of violent religious, inter-racial, inter-ethnic,
sectarian spatial interactions, can become fatal and problematic in a multicultural
world. As a Digital Humanities scholar working towards the goal of common good through collaborative knowledge sharing, through this project I also aim at creating an awareness about the precarious deadly
cyber space or even you can call it, “the maze of terrorism” in which people
from across the world are lured into and trapped in
