In an age when organized, professional media outlets aren’t necessary to disseminate information, urging news sites to avoid posting pictures and video from the killings likely won’t be sufficient to avoid giving ISIS the satisfaction of having its message broadcast around the world. #ISISMediaBlackout is also aimed at urging every social media user, each one a digital publisher themselves, to show a similar degree of restraint.
As ISIS pursues a sophisticated and deliberate social media strategy in its propaganda war against the United States and its allies in the Middle East, how much attention we pay to the products of that strategy is a question that not only needs to be answered by every media publication covering the unfolding events, but for every denizen of the Internet who is paying attention.