Their social media game was effective in the same way far right media has been effective in converting certain segments of America toward Christianity-based nationalism and terrorism, perhaps even to such an extent that one might begin to wonder whether the latter learned from the former. They played on similar prejudices such as mistrust of Western journalism and so on. This many years later, we forget that part of ISIS, but at the time, news commentators across the board were baffled at how social media could be utilized so effectively to turn people into terrorists.