ABSTRACT
Data for this study comprise mainly tweets downloaded from the Boko Haram English Language Twitter profile and that of Al Shabaab between 2012 and 2014. As at the time of this research, there were only 148 tweets (of 3090 words) and retweets (with 565 followers and 8 following) on the Boko Haram account (i.e. @Boko Haram) posted between 2011 and 2012. Surprisingly, the Boko Haram Twitter account appears dormant since 2012. The reasons for this inactivity in the account are not immediately known. Possible reasons could be that those who operated the account suddenly withdrew their supports for the group; second, Boko Haram deliberately abandoned their English language account for whatever reason. When the sect first came on Twitter, they operated two separate accounts namely: @Boko Haram (republic of Arewa) and @Boko Haram (Chadian border). The latter account was shut down not long afterwards, probably for using it to spread linguistic violence. The former account (i.e. @Boko Haram, republic of Arewa) was left, where I obtained the data for this study. Al Shabaab’s English language account was closed down by Twitter shortly after the attack on Nairobi Westgate Shopping Mall for breaking Twitter’s terms of service, (i.e. Twitter prohibits the use of Twitter for making threats of violence; see AP 24 September 2013). Al Shabaab had livetweeted the Mall attack and posted tweets that defended the mass killings and threatened more bloodshed (see Ortiz 2013). An example below is a live tweet by Al Shabaab during the Westgate attack:
Al Shabaab Twitter feed (i.e. @HSMPress) carries a self-identify description (i.e. ‘Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujahideen is an Islamic movement that governs South & Central Somalia and part of the global struggle towards the revival of Islamic Khilaafa’). The Boko Haram account on the other hand carries a slogan: ‘I hate School’, which appears as a logo. It also carries an explanation such as ‘to hate is human, to bomb is divine’. ‘We hate western inventions including Twitter: however, we feel the necessity to use it to reach out to our fans’. The first tweet by Al Shabaab is in the name of God with the following words: ‘In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful’.
