Islamic State’s quest for legitimacy: An analysis of IS media frames in Dabiq magazine

Abstract

This article focuses on the media frames of legitimization presented by the Islamist militant group the Islamic State (IS) in their English-language magazine Dabiq to justify their occupation and expansion in Iraq and Syria between June 2014 and July 2017. It argues that, similar to any other militant group, IS faced challenges in establishing, sustaining and projecting legitimacy of both the organization and its militant actions. Focusing on IS narrative frames of legitimacy in Dabiq, this article looks at how the group constructed frame hierarchies that built upon widely accepted higher-order meta-frames of Islamic belief and Westphalian devolution of state power, to lever support for lower-order frames that are of strategic advantage to IS. The author agues such narratives of legitimacy were vital in IS’s attempt to undermine the authority of the sovereign states they occupied, and were necessary to challenge the monopoly of state violence in order to legitimize its own use of strategic violence both inside the self-proclaimed caliphate and in its expansion.