Story: Islamic State Using Female Terrorists More and More

This story originally appeared at The Independent:

Female terrorists are far more involved in Isis than has previously been thought and often escape detection as they play crucial but less visible ‘behind the scenes’ roles, new research has claimed.

Despite the figures most commonly associated with the terror organisation being male, thousands of women are the ‘glue holding the organisation together’, researchers at the University of Miami have found. The study ‘Women’s Connectivity in Extreme Networks’ has been published in the journal Science Advances and involved researchers analysing data from 40,000 suspected terrorists.

Using a software system, the team identified 24,883 men and 16,931 women whose online behaviour indicated they played a role in Isis. They monitored the Russian social media site Vkontakte which is less strict on removing contested social media use than other social media sites such as Facebook.

Analysis found that although men dominated the groups numerically, women have the most effective communications and link segments of the groups to increase cohesion.

Read the full story at The Independent.