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15 First Amend. L. Rev. 497 (2016-2017)
Twitter in the Age of Terrorism: Can a Retweet Constitute a True Threat

handle is hein.journals/falr15 and id is 519 raw text is: TWITTER IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM: CAN A RETWEET CONSTITUTE A TRUE THREAT? Taylor Spencer* INTRODUCTION The communication landscape in recent years has drastically expanded and changed to include new mediums of communication, and that growth is illustrated in the proliferation of social media platforms like Twitter. Since its inception in 2006,1 Twitter has grown to boast 313 million monthly active users, with seventy-nine percent of those users holding accounts outside the United States.2 The reach and influence of Twitter, along with other social media sites, is tremendous, and has had both positive and negative consequences for the world at large. One area in which Twitter has created an unforeseen impact is through the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) use of the platform as a radicalization and recruitment tool. ISIS has been a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization since 2004.3 Users across the world are able to spread ISIS's message through social media, contributing to the proliferation of lone wolf' terrorist attacks carried out on behalf of the organization.4 Safya Roe Yassin, an American-born Muslim woman living in Missouri, is one such American who has been accused of supporting ISIS through her Twitter and other social media accounts. ' Yassin retweeted multiple statements supporting ISIS, resulting in her arrest for what the prosecution describes as * Taylor Spencer is a student at University of North Carolina, School of Law and aStaff Member on First Amendment Law Review. 1 Twitter Turns Six, TWITTER (Mar. 21, 2012), https://blog.twitter.com/2012/twitter- turns-six. 2 Twitter Usage/Company Facts, TWITTER, https://about.twitter.com/company (last visited Sept. 19, 2016). 3 Bureau of Counterterrorism, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, U.S. DEP'T OF ST., http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm (last visited Sept. 20, 2016). 4 Katie Worth, Lone WolfAttacks Are Becoming More Common-And More Deadly, FRONTLINE (July 14, 2016), http://w .bsorg/wgbh/frontline/article/lone-wolf attacks-are~becomin-more-_common-andmore-dead1 '(Al Qaeda- and ISIS- inspired lone wolf attacks in the U.S. numbered 20 so far this decade, up from eight in the 2000s .... ). 5 Nicole Hong, ISIS RetweetArrest Raises Free Speech Issues, WALL ST. J. (Aug. 12, 2016), http://www.wsj.com/articles/isis-retweet-arrest-raises-free-speech-issues- 1471033391.

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