The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram continues years of groundbreaking reporting on violent extremism and online radicalization by ProPublica and FRONTLINE. Last year, ProPublica reporter James Bandler, ProPublica reporter and FRONTLINE correspondent A.C. Thompson and FRONTLINE filmmakers Thomas Jennings, Annie Wong and Karina Meier discovered that such groups had migrated to a new platform, Telegram, and started to spin a global online network of hate. These extremists called their corner of the platform Terrorgram, and its leaders called themselves the Terrorgram Collective. More than just creating and sharing propaganda, these extremists recruited, groomed and encouraged young people to kill in the name of far-right terror. For many months, they did so outside the gaze of law enforcement. The consequences were deadly.
The reporting team showed how, in the span of five years, the collective grew Terrorgram from a handful of accounts into a community with hundreds of chats and channels focused on recruiting would-be terrorists, sharing grisly videos and trading expertise on everything from assassination techniques to the best ways to sabotage water systems and electrical transmission lines. Their network and influence was made possible through lax content moderation by Telegram.
To trace the rise and fall of Terrorgram, ProPublica and FRONTLINE obtained a trove of chat logs and got access to some of the extremists’ private channels, allowing reporters to track in real time their posts and relationships. They combed through legal documents, talked with law enforcement officials and researchers in six countries and interviewed a member of the collective in jail.
With never-before-published details, the documentary and related stories trace how various loosely-moderated platforms have become havens for extremist ideas and for radicalization, from 4chan to 8chan to eventually Telegram. The investigation shows how a number of attackers around the world, from Bratislava, Slovakia, to Christchurch, New Zealand, to California, used these various platforms and were encouraged by them.
The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram also probes how authorities in several countries would eventually arrest around a dozen people allegedly tied to the Terrorgram Collective — including two Americans who pleaded not guilty. The company says it has always screened postings for problematic content and that “calls for violence from any group are not tolerated.”
An intricate, masterclass in investigative reporting, this project powerfully weaves together terror attacks from Bratislava to El Paso and Christchurch, exposing seemingly disparate acts of terror as a part of a broader, systemic proliferation of transnational extremist ideology through clandestine influence and networks on social platforms.
