The Bondi Beach attack in Australia on 14 December and the Red Fort attack in India on 10 November 2025 demonstrate how social media platforms are being systematically weaponised to radicalise individuals to launch terrorist attacks. Far from reality, such attacks are concealed as individual efforts, but are systematically designed and organised.

Fake news, narrative wars, and propaganda serve as powerful tools that coax vulnerable, deranged, antisocial individuals, in the name of religion, state, or a dystopian agenda. Terrorism has traditionally relied on the dissemination of extremist and violent ideologies. However, modern terrorist organisations are not only exploiting ideological divides or logistical networks; they are also leveraging advanced digital technologies and weaponising them.

Social media’s characteristics of being low-cost, fast, decentralised, yet globally connected have enabled terrorist organisations to leverage it for ideological propaganda, recruitment, mobilisation, and execution of terror attacks. Although social media can be characterised as an enabler rather than a primary driver of terrorism, its role in the modern-day terror cycle cannot be overstated.

The propagation of extremist ideology through social media with the aim of mass-scale radicalisation is carried out by utilising emotional and psychological manipulation. The exploitation of individual vulnerabilities lies at the heart of this manipulation. 

The Islamic State (IS), its sympathisers, and other fringe groups are at the forefront of running these campaigns. Contrary to popular perception, IS is not only active in the region but is also getting stronger. 

Unlike a few years ago, digital operations form the core of IS’s strategy to advance its ideological and operational objectives. After its downfall in Iraq and Syria, the IS abandoned its concept of the so-called caliphate to achieve territorial conquests. Instead, it is now expanding its ideological influence through online propaganda networks. It exploits encrypted social media messaging platforms to support its operations by targeting the vulnerable and often deranged, misguided youth who are both most active on social media and susceptible to radicalisation. 

The IS’s modus operandi has transformed into a “hybrid model” under which it delegates operational autonomy to local terrorist groups while retaining ideological control and a degree of oversight. 

The Indian subcontinent and the broader Indian Subcontinent are among the regions that have witnessed profound ramifications of the online radicalisation drive. By 2024, IS’s online networks expanded to include countries like India and Bangladesh to influence the vulnerable population through secure communication channels. India has been gravely affected by the expansion of IS’s radicalisation in the Sub-continent. Pakistan-based terror organisations, such as The Resistance Front (proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba), People’s Anti-Fascist Front (proxy of Jaish-e-Mohammad), as well as IS, have used social media for propaganda. Additionally, Islamic radicalisation has increased in Bangladesh under the Yunus regime, who has displayed a soft attitude, if not tacitly promoted, towards radical Islamic ideology and anti-minorities organisations. 

Terrorist organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami have deeply penetrated Bangladeshi society, which has been aided and abetted by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In Afghanistan, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP) and Al-Qaeda have resurfaced after the Taliban government overtook Afghanistan. The entire region is plagued by online propaganda of terrorist organisations, which often act discreetly, and have revived their modus operandi by leveraging social media platforms. 

According to the investigation, the terrorists involved in the Red Fort attack in India were influenced and radicalised by social media. Since all the perpetrators were well-educated, it has been called “white collar terrorism”. In addition to the radicalisation of the terrorists, social media platforms appear to have also played a crucial role in executing the attack. 

For instance, terrorists relied on the Swiss messaging app Threema for secure communication. Threema is known for its strong privacy features, including end-to-end encryption, no metadata storage, and message deletion on both ends. Due to these features, forensic investigators find it challenging to determine the entire communication chain. Moreover, the terrorist also used “dead drop” mail to share information, which involves using the same account to write unsent emails, thereby leaving a minimal digital footprint. 

Cyber-enabled terrorism has become a critical national security issue, especially in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, where end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms and online recruitment drives have connected a substantial percentage of youths to terror networks.

The same can be said about the Bondi Beach attack in Australia, which killed 15 people when two terrorists opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration. The terrorists reportedly visited the southern Philippines around a month before the attack. 

According to the Australian investigation agency, the attackers are linked to IS and were trained in the Southern Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf group maintains a long-running insurgency campaign. Like the terrorists involved in the Red Fort attack in India, the Bondi Beach terrorists also received online radicalisation from the IS propaganda machine. These incident also demonstrate how terrorist modules have evolved to leverage technological advancements through encrypted, decentralised messaging platforms.

Countries of the region are waking up to the perils of uncontrolled social media platforms. Australia recently introduced new law to protect young adults from social media exploitation. Malaysia’s Online Safety Act 2025 has entered into effect from 1 January 2026. Singapore’s Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill, tabled in 2025, aims to curb race-based hatred and divisions, while Indonesia’s 2024 SAMAN System & Child Protection has provisions to penalise those who do not remove terrorism-related content after it is reported. A new chapter to the law has been added recently to strengthen the provisions. India blocked 9,845 URLs promoting radicalisation and terrorist agenda in 2025 alone. 

In other to deal with these challenges more systematically and resolutely, countries in the region must develop region-wide legal and cybersecurity frameworks to address these threats. At the global level, like-minded countries should strengthen collaboration to address these transnational threats (cross-border funding, private social media platforms, etc.) by deepening cooperation among intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Dr. Rahul Mishra is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, and a Senior Research Fellow at the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance, Thammasat University, Thailand. He is also the Series Editor of Palgrave Macmillan Series on Indo-Pacific Studies. He can be reached at rahul.seas@gmail.com X Handle: @rahulmishr_

Harshit Prajapati is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He can be reached at harshi55_isn@jnu.ac.in  X Handle: @harshitp_47

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