A Longitudinal Dataset of Twitter ISIS Users

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive longitudinal Twitter dataset of ISIS-affiliated users, enabling detailed analysis of individual accounts' roles and activities over time, which is crucial for understanding ISIS online operations.

Contribution

The study provides a novel longitudinal dataset and a framework for differentiating ISIS-related accounts' functionalities, advancing research on online ISIS activities.

Findings

Users engaged with ISIS accounts from 2014-2015 to 2021

Some users support ISIS through retweets and quote tweets

Preliminary analyses reveal insights into account behaviors

Abstract

We present a large longitudinal dataset of tweets from two sets of users that are suspected to be affiliated with ISIS. These sets of users are identified based on a prior study and a campaign aimed at shutting down ISIS Twitter accounts. These users have engaged with known ISIS accounts at least once during 2014-2015 and are still active as of 2021. Some of them have directly supported the ISIS users and their tweets by retweeting them, and some of the users that have quoted tweets of ISIS, have uncertain connections to ISIS seed accounts. This study and the dataset represent a unique approach to analyzing ISIS data. Although much research exists on ISIS online activities, few studies have focused on individual accounts. Our approach to validating accounts as well as developing a framework for differentiating accounts' functionality (e.g., propaganda versus operational planning) offers a foundation for future research. We perform some descriptive statistics and preliminary analyses on our collected data to provide deeper insight and highlight the significance and practicality of such analyses. We further discuss several cross-disciplinary potential use cases and research directions.