Terrorist groups are increasingly using the Internet as a communication and propaganda tool where they can safely communicate with their affiliates, coordinate action plans, raise funds, and introduce new supporters to their networks.
This is evident from the large number of web sites run by different terrorist organizations, though the URLs and geographical locations of these web sites are frequently moved around the globe.
The wide use of the Internet by terrorists makes some people think that the risk of a major cyber-attack against the communication infrastructure is low. However, this situation may change abruptly once the terrorists decide that the Net does not serve their purposes anymore and, like any other invention of our civilization, deserves destruction.
There are ever-growing number of online social media platforms, the world has shrunk even further with regards to communication and knowledge-sharing perspective.
However, communication, at times, can be deterrent when misused using such widespread social media tools. The acts of terrorism become seemingly convenient as the barrier of communication is nullified.
This propagation of hateful content becomes much more easier and even recruiting anti-socials gets easier. Oddly, these social media platforms are the ones that prove essential during such crisis situations.
We must review most of the works reported by various authors in the last 10 years on the use of social media during a time of terrorist attack to addressing how to use social media for public communication with the emergency organization and military or police during terrorist attack, how to perform post-attack social media analytic and how to detect acts of terrorism, unrest, and hatred using social media analytic.
With this objective, the authors also hope to inspire other researchers to work in this direction and use this review as a guide for instigating future research to counter-attack terrorism as it is the need of the hour for our country.
