Resumen de Digital terror crimes

Cody Corliss

• Terror actors operating within armed conflict have weaponized social media by using these platforms to threaten and spread images of brutality in order to taunt, terrify, and intimidate civilians. These acts or threats of violence are terror, a prohibited war crime in which acts or threats of violence are made with the primary purpose of spreading extreme fear among the civilian population. The weaponization of terror content through social media is a digital terror crime.

  This article argues that the war crime of terror applies to digital terror crimes perpetrated through social media platforms. It situates digital terror crimes within the existing jurisprudence on terror at ad hoc international and hybrid criminal tribunals. Terror is an autonomous war crime within international criminal law, but all previous convictions for terror have always been predicated upon another underlying criminal act. Digital terror crimes are different: The underlying act of social media use is not necessarily a war crime outside the crime of terror. This article explains terror in the digital context, examines the ways that digital terror crimes can be committed in armed conflict, and considers the various actors who could be implicated in the perpetration and distribution of digital terror.