Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-27-2024
College/Unit
WVU College of Law
Department/Program/Center
WVU College of Law
Abstract
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 terror among the civilian population. The weaponization of terror content through social media is a digital terror crime.
This article is the first to argue 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 occurred within the context of an 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. In addition to examining the ways that digital terror crimes can be committed during armed conflict, this article considers the various actors who could be implicated in the perpetration and distribution of digital terror.
Original Publication Title
Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
Digital Commons Citation
Cody Corliss, Digital Terror Crimes, Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 58 (2023).
Source Citation
Cody Corliss, Digital Terror Crimes, Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 58 (2023).
Comments
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