Black-boxing the Black Flag: Anonymous Sharing Platforms and ISIS Content Distribution Tactics

The study examines three anonymous sharing portals employed strategically by the Islamic State of Iraq andSham (ISIS) to achieve its political ends. This study argues that anonymous sharing portals such as Sendvid.com,Justpast.it, and Dump.to have been instrumental in allowing individual jihadists to generate content, disseminatepropaganda and communicate freely while routing around filtering practiced by popular social media networks.The study draws on Actor Network Theory (ANT) in examining the relationship between ISIS jihadists and theemergence of anonymous sharing portals. The study suggests that, even though used prior to the massive degradingoperation across social media, anonymous sharing portals were instrumental in allowing ISIS to maintain itsnetworking structure in the face of coordinated disruption.