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Abstract
The posting of journalist beheadings online and the arrests of numerous nationals attempting to join terrorist organisations have shown that terrorists are increasingly using social media to spread ideology and recruit members. The popularity of sotial media around the world provides a huge potential audience for terrorist content. Unfortunately, because of states' inability to cooperate, previous attempts to govern and police the Internet have failed. Any regulation of the Internet or sotial media also raises collective action problems and baseline definition issues. The U.N. is not in the position to pass a binding treaty or convention because use of sotial media by terrorists is harder to identify than other regulated areas of internet use. Disagreement among U.N. members on whether internet governance should be implemented by the international community also makes a treaty unlikely. Despite these problems, this Comment suggests that the U.N. still has an important role to play in the regulation of terrorist content in sotial media. By taking a role as a coordinator between states, the U.N. can create an effective monitoring regime that reduces the costs of internet governance and promotes coordination between states.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction 283
II. Terrorism and Social Media: A Recent Phenomenon 285
A. Social Media and Its Advantages 286
B. Terrorists' Use of Social Media 288
III. The U.N. and Internet Governance 289
A. Social Media and the Right to Freedom of Expression 290
B. The U.N.'s Stance on Terrorists' Use of the Internet.................................291
IV. The Challenges of Regulating the Internet and Social Media.......................292
A. Collective Action Problems: The Internet as a Commons.........................292
B. The Definition of Terrorism: A Baseline Issue............................................293
C. The Failed Convention on Internet Governance: The World Conference on International Telecommunications................................................................294
D. The Implausibility of a Limited Treaty: Cyberterrorism and Social Media, an Imperfect Analogy............................................................................................297
1. The Convention on Cybercrime: a success story.....................................297
2. Fundamental differences between cyberterrorism and social media.....298
V. The U.N.'s Role in Social Media Governance: An Ideal Facilitator..............299
A. The Insufficiency of Private Regulation........................................................300
B. Solving the Collective Action Problem: Principles of Effective Monitoring and Their Application to the U.N.......................................................................301
C. A Preliminary First Step: Identifying the Best Definition of Terrorism................................................................................................................304
1. The U.S...........................................................................................................304
2. The U.K..........................................................................................................305
3. France..............................................................................................................306
4. Russia..............................................................................................................306
5. China...............................................................................................................307
6. Who...