The Obama administration announced a major revamp on Friday of its campaign to counter Isis propaganda amid mounting public anxiety about the group’s ability to encourage attacks within the US.The White House said that it was setting up a new counter-terrorism task force that will develop policies to prevent the radicalisation of potential terrorists. ​

The Obama administration on Friday announced an overhaul of its efforts to respond to online propaganda from the Islamic State after months of acknowledgments that it had largely failed in its attempts to counter extremist recruitment and exhortations to violence on social media. The administration has emphasized that it needs the assistance of some of the nation’s biggest technology companies, and a group of top White House and national security officials flew to California on Friday to plead their case with executives.

Online activism is a frequently debated topic amongst journalists and researchers alike. What effect can a popular Twitter hashtag really have in achieving political or social change? Wasim Ahmed looks in depth at last year’s heavily tweeted #ThisIsACoup hashtag. While concrete outcomes may still be indeterminate, [...] social media is now a rich space for activism, expressions of solidarity and information sharing.

Yet, the authors of ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa, a study released last month by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, seem to conclude something along these lines. “Social media plays a crucial role in the radicalization and, at times, mobilization of U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers,” they warn. “Some members of this online echo chamber eventually make the leap from keyboard warriors to actual militancy.”

From the mundane to the bizarre, everything seemed to include a hashtag in global development this year.

Somalia’s Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has used a clip of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in its latest recruitment film. The group released a recruitment film in the form of a documentary about racial injustice in the United States featuring Trump’s recent call to ban all Muslims from the country.