Jihadist Propaganda Research Articles

Following in the Trail of Islamic State: The Rise of Media Platforms in the Jihadist Ecosystem

This article examines the role of media platforms in the jihadist propaganda ecosystem. It presents a case study of the Muntasir Media platform which achieved extensive media impact in Spain during the period 2018–19. A descriptive analysis is provided of the emergence, evolution and demise of the platform, which can be viewed as an archetypal illustration of the effect sought by Islamic State propaganda in extolling the work of media jihadists. The article argues that platforms have not only been essential for maintaining the visibility of the jihadist narrative but have also offered an attractive form of surrogate activism for radicalised individuals cut off from formal organisations.

Frame your friends close and your enemies closer: how al-Masra newspaper imagines individuals

ABSTRACT Armed groups are well-known for discussing their allies and adversaries in unitary actor terms. However, individuals also play an important part in the discourse of armed groups. Focusing on jihadist propaganda, we adopt a multi-method approach to examine the influence of individuals on militants’ diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing. We do so by analyzing original data collected from 1250 articles in al-Masra, an Arabic language newspaper linked to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Quantitatively, we record the number of articles in which numerous jihadist figures and leaders from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the United States were mentioned to measure their significance in al-Masra’s contents. Qualitatively, we explore al-Masra’s discourse surrounding these different individuals. Rather than only framing friends and foes in unitary actor terms, we find that individuals played a central role in al-Masra’s framing efforts. Yet, the extent to which al-Masra discussed different personalities varied across organizations as well as countries. These findings contribute to scholarship on individuals in conflict processes, armed group framing strategies, and jihadist propaganda.

Paratexts as gatekeepers in online global jihadist translation – The narrative of a blog-based Arabic translation of Dabiq

Translation has played a pivotal role in disseminating global jihadist propaganda online from the declaration of global jihad in the late 1990s to its recent manifestation in 2014 with the emergence of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This paper contends that paratextual frames have a significant role in mediating the ideologically charged messages of global jihadist to diverse communities and when contexts change. The article investigates the gatekeeping function of paratexts within a blog-based Arabic translation of ISIS’s English magazine Dabiq (AZIZ8178 2016a). Drawing upon narrativity (Somers & Gibson 1993; Bruner 1991; Baker 2006a), the translations published in a blog, AZIZ8178, are scrutinized to explore the paratextual interventions that frame translated narratives. The results pinpoint a deliberate selection of articles for translation that aligns with the shifting circumstances faced by ISIS on the ground. Moreover, AZIZ8178’s Arabic version of Dabiq is shown to construct a narrative centered on identity, emphasizing internal conflicts and divisions within contemporary Arab communities. It is posited that AZIZ8178’s paratexts familiarize ISIS radical doctrines within the socio-political fabric, potentially inciting fanaticism among the targeted Arabic-speaking audience. The visibility and autonomy of the translator become evident in the paratextual elements of signatures and footnotes, eliciting his jihadist stance.

CONFLICT IN UKRAINE, RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE JIHADIST PROPAGANDA, CHECHENS BATTALIONS AND THE LINK WITH THE RUSSIAN NORTH CAUCASUS

Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, international media have reported the presence of Chechen battalions among the ranks of Kyiv and Moscow’s forces. The Chechen presence in the conflict has nourished the jihadist propaganda in the Russian language and created a debate in the Russian North Caucasus and among the Russian Muslim umma (community) regarding the legitimacy of fighting with or against the Russian Federation. This paper wants to analyse the Russian jihadist propaganda’s narrative over Ukraine, the Chechen battalions’ role in support of the Ukraine army, and the geopolitical risk for the entire Eurasian region from terrorist groups’ exploitation of the Ukraine conflict.

Deradicalizing YouTube: Characterization, Detection, and Personalization of Religiously Intolerant Arabic Videos

Growing evidence suggests that YouTube's recommendation algorithm plays a role in online radicalization via surfacing extreme content. Radical Islamist groups, in particular, have been profiting from the global appeal of YouTube to disseminate hate and jihadist propaganda. In this quantitative, data-driven study, we investigate the prevalence of religiously intolerant Arabic YouTube videos, the tendency of the platform to recommend such videos, and how these recommendations are affected by demographics and watch history. Based on our deep learning classifier developed to detect hateful videos and a large-scale dataset of over 350K videos, we find that Arabic videos targeting religious minorities are particularly prevalent in search results (30%) and first-level recommendations (21%), and that 15% of overall captured recommendations point to hateful videos. Our personalized audit experiments suggest that gender and religious identity can substantially affect the extent of exposure to hateful content. Our results contribute vital insights into the phenomenon of online radicalization and facilitate curbing online harmful content.

Temporary Scheme of Modern Jihadism

Based on the propaganda materials of the international terrorist organization Islamic State*, the article examines the temporal scheme and the historical narrative of jihadist propaganda. Studies of the politics of memory and historical narratives of organizations of radical Islamism are practically absent due to the inaccessibility of the source base. This study is based on the official jihadist propaganda materials coming from the propaganda bodies of the Islamic State*, and on the corpus of sources of spontaneous propaganda of supporters of radical Islamism. Due to the extremely different socio-cultural basis of its supporters, jihadist propaganda is forced to operate not with an integral narrative, but rather with a set of plots, building a discrete narrative about the past. These plots correspond to the ethnic myth scheme proposed by Smith A. D. Despite the fact that modern jihadism is not an ethnic community due to the orientation towards internationalism and universalism of the dogma, the commonality of religious and, more importantly, political ideas make it possible to analyze the historical narrative of radical Islamism from the point of view of an ethnosymbolic approach. The study of representations of the past, characteristic of a modern jihadists, is carried out because of the types of cultural memory identified by Jan Assman. The study main historical points fixing the temporal scheme of the Islamic State*; and some stable ideas about the past of Islamic civilization, characteristic of jihadist propaganda. Of particular interest is the mythology of the centuries-old global conspiracy against the Muslim Ummah, which is in many ways the key concept of the jihadist narrative, as well as the eschatological representations of jihadist propaganda.

Under the shadow of swords: The Rhetoric of Jihad

Abstract The ideological discourse of Jihadist groups like Al Qaeda or Islamic State is largely built on the use of persuasive techniques which act as instruments for radicalisation and recruitment, and more generally, “convince the audience of the veracity of the doctrine presented” (Adam 2017: 5). This article explores the use of metaphor as an important rhetorical and ideological dimension to jihadist texts. Current findings suggest that religious writings often make use of rich conceptual metaphors to convey distinctive ideological perspectives (Prentice, Rayson and Taylor 2012), for instance, the well-known journey conceptual metaphor, with the image schemata of a path, leading towards a better life, reward in an afterlife, moral choice, hope, and a closeness to God (Jäkel 2002). Specifically, the research adopts a Critical Metaphor Analysis framework (Charteris-Black 2004), which combines Corpus Linguistics with Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. The data for this study is taken from a collection of jihadist online magazines. The corpus has been compared against the Qur’an in order to ascertain whether jihadist propaganda writers are inspired by conventional religious tropes as a way of giving authority to their doctrines. The results show that religiously inspired concepts do indeed help the writers to anchor their message to a deeply seated and authoritative set of ideologies. At the same time, semantic and pragmatic differences in the use of these metaphors suggest an ability to manipulate pre-existing conceptualisations in order to fulfil the communicative needs of the writers, i.e. to embody the principles of jihadism. The findings presented here focus on the following domains: religion as a journey; light as good; heat as fighting; and spirituality as nature.

From image to function

AbstractThe strategy of jihadist groups is based on objectives that are sometimes global. Specifically, many of these groups argue that Muslims, wherever they live, should fight for the establishment of an Islamic state or, at least, for such a state to be possible elsewhere. Therefore, taking advantage of the emergence of the Internet, they initiated an equally universal narrative strategy, with the production of a great deal of content, especially audiovisual texts. The effects of this material are known and, unfortunately, may be behind the terrorist actions of various individuals in many countries. Hence the concern of academics lies with their analyses and with the development of methodologies that can successfully deal with large amounts of multimodal information. The present research, therefore, aims to apply a quantitative procedure to the analysis of jihadist propaganda. Specifically, the authors have analysed 2,211 videos belonging to different terrorist groups, by applying an image classification algorithm. The results show that this type of approach has realistic possibilities of providing relevant information about this corpus – when realized, they may help to create automated analytical tools capable of dealing with the enormous amount of information that can be disseminated on-line.

The political language of modern Islamism: practices of legitimation of the International Terrorist Organization “Islamic State” (terrorist organization banned in Russia)

This article analyzes the ways of legitimation that are characteristic to the Russian-language propaganda of the terrorist group “Islamic State” that is banned in Russia. The arguments the extremist propaganda resorts to are revealed on the example of the online magazine “Istok”: founded on Muslim law, legitimation on the basis of Quranic texts, appeal to moral justice of the establishment of “Caliphate”, and positioning of “Caliphate” as the traditional sovereign state with its attributes. Description is given to the peculiarities of the Russian-language jihadist propaganda and radical discourse of the “Islamic State” overall: an important distinctive feature of the Islamist propaganda is the archaic motives. Having studied the propagandistic materials, the author outlines such features of jihadist propaganda as propensity to determinism and fatalism, orientation towards eschatological worldview, reference of the logical and political arguments to the times of the establishment of Islam. Application of the methods of political linguistics to the information product of terrorist organization reveals the basic strategy of legitimization of the “Islamic State”, which resorts to the archaic, establishment of the “caliphate” of Islamists to the time of origination of Islam and the era of the “righteous caliphs”. The elements of the traditional state are largely translated onto the external, non-Muslim environment: coverage of the activity of the administrative structures of Islamic State, demonstration of the own economic system, and abundance of national symbols. The analysis of propagandistic materials allows concluding on the nominal role of the leader of the jihadist group Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose name is associated not only with the phenomenal success of the jihadist project, but also the equally painful defeat that the “Islamic State” suffered in the end.

Assessment of the russian strategy to contrast terrorism and jihadist propaganda in the north Caucasus

Terrorism, violent attacks and political Islam have affected the North Caucasus since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. If in the past the Caucasus Emirate was the leading terrorist organisation in the region since 2014 the Islamic State gained popularity and established the Vilayat Kavkaz (Caucasus Province) as part of the Caliphate exploiting the local critical socioeconomic condition and promoting the jihadist propaganda in the Russian language (i.e. the magazine ‘Istok’) also thanks to the considerable presence of North Caucasian foreign fighters among the ranks of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Although currently the international coalition forces mainly defeated the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, this organisation still jeopardises the North Caucasus often identified as the most volatile and impoverished area of the Russian Federation characterised by ethnic conflicts, the rise of Salafism, stagnation, and corruption. This study aims at stressing that the Russian government has elaborated a strategy mostly based on special military operations and massive investments in tourism and logistics which can exacerbate more the precarious status quo of the region favouring the dissemination of jihadist propaganda because it does not consider the historical, sociocultural, ethnic, and religious background. The region is not exempt to jihadist propaganda and terrorism and, if the Russian government cannot financially and economically support the regional leaders or will not change its approach, terrorism and political Islam could critically influence the North Caucasus posing a dangerous menace to the stability and security of the Russian Federation and entire Eurasia.

Fake It till You Make It? Representation of Special Operations Forces Capabilities in Jihadist Propaganda Videos

Jihadist propaganda videos depicting training camps and combat scenes have steadily increased in variety and quality over the years. A small number of these videos attempt to mimic Special Operation Forces (SOF)’s tactics and skills. This subset of jihadist propaganda might go beyond a mere attempt to show prowess and reveal actual operational capabilities. This article analyzes three exemplary jihadist propaganda videos depicting claimed SOF capabilities through expert reviews with active service SOF personnel to assess the actual tactical quality of the content shown. It also discusses the potential reasons for those groups to mimic SOF and implications for counterterrorism.

Análisis y efectos de la propaganda yihadista en los medios de comunicación en España (2016-2019)

Los efectos mediáticos del terrorismo yihadista han dado lugar a una gran cantidad de contribuciones, tanto dentro los estudios de comunicación política como en los de seguridad y defensa. Los entramados de la propaganda yihadista y su evolución han sido una preocupación constante para militares, políticos y académicos. El objetivo de este artículo es doble: Por un lado, se muestra cómo han sido los comunicados yihadistas que hacen referencia a España en los últimos años. Y, por otro lado, se estudiará el impacto de dichos comunicados en los medios de comunicación, concretamente en la prensa. A partir de una metodología cuantitativa clásica, el análisis de contenido, esta investigación aporta datos novedosos sobre la significatividad mediática de grupos como Al-Qaeda o Daesh en España. El análisis de prensa se ha realizado a partir de las teorías de encuadres, principalmente con la finalidad de extraer las temáticas mediáticas principales a la hora de tratar el terrorismo yihadista. En definitiva, el presente trabajo aporta una visión empírica sobre la relación existente entre comunicados y cobertura mediática, tema de estudio escasamente explorado hasta el momento en el ámbito académico español.

Symbolic field of modern Islamism

The subject of this research is the key topoi of the discourse of Islamist propaganda and the mechanism of their representation by a number of unaccredited sources of the Russian-language extremist propaganda. The object of this research is the Islamist discourse covered by the “official” sources of the prohibited in the Russian Federation international terrorist organizations – “Islamic State”, “Dabiq” and “Rumiyah”, as well as a number of Russian-language sources of Islamist propaganda. The author examines such aspects of jihadist propaganda as the category of space, semiotics of Islamist propaganda; postmodern traits in the jihadist propaganda materials. Analysis is conducted on the category “Dawlah” (“state” from Arabic) as a sovereign concept in the discourse of “Islamic State” organization. Special attention is paid to the characteristic of Islamist propaganda as a phenomenon typical for the era of postmodernism. The distinctive features of the Russian-language Islamist discourse are described. Leaning on the analysis of textual and visual materials of Islamist propaganda, the author concludes on inextricable connection of the discourse of jihadist propaganda with the society of its function, despite the thesis on irreconcilable confrontation to the “Taghut” society declared by the ideologists of the international terrorist organization “Islamic State”. This thesis is proven by a certain symbolic set of Islamist propaganda, usage of symbols comprehensible to modern audiences, and significant attention given to the brand and style of the jihadists. After the defeat of the Caliphate as a proto-state entity (rather than a terrorist organization), the “Islamic State” substantially migrated into the virtual space. In an attempt to influence the audience, jihadist propaganda operates not only on the level of objective reality, but immerses the reader in an entirely virtual world. This work reveals the peculiarities of such process.

Competition and Innovation in a Hostile Environment: How Jabhat Al-Nusra and Islamic State Moved to Twitter in 2013–2014

Social media offer unprecedented opportunities to terrorist groups to spread their message and target specific audiences for indoctrination and recruitment. In 2013 and 2014, social media, in particular Twitter, overtook Internet forums as preferred space for jihadist propaganda. This article looks into Arabic statements by Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamic State and jihadist forum administrators and online activists to argue that, beside the easier use of social media and disruption and infiltration of the forums, the conflict between the jihadist groups accelerated the migration to social media and the building of a presence on Twitter that provided relative resilience to suspensions.

Othering the West in the online Jihadist propaganda magazines Inspire and Dabiq

Abstract This paper examines how the jihadist terrorist groups Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State discursively construct ‘the West’ as an alien, aberrant ‘other’ in their respective online propaganda magazines Inspire and Dabiq over a 5 year period (2010–2015). The analysis integrates insights from the field of Terrorism Studies into a Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies approach, working centrally with the notions of othering and conventionalised impoliteness. Our findings reveal not only that othering is a key discursive process in the groups’ online propaganda machinery but that it is discursively realised via homogenisation, suppression (stereotyping) and pejoration strategies. The latter are further examined via the notion of conventional impoliteness. Pointed criticism emerges as the most frequent conventionalised impoliteness strategy in both magazines. Threats, condescension and exclusion strategies are also saliently used, albeit with different relative frequencies within each magazine. The findings show the value of Discourse Analysis to research into (jihadist) terrorism, including the possibility of drawing upon its findings to develop tailored counter-messages to those advanced by (jihadist) terrorist groups.

The rise of Jihadist propaganda on social networks

Using a dataset of over 1.9 million messages posted on Twitter by about 25,000 ISIS members, we explore how ISIS makes use of social media to spread its propaganda and to recruit militants from the Arab world and across the globe. By distinguishing between violence-driven, theological, and sectarian content, we trace the connection between online rhetoric and key events on the ground. To the best of our knowledge, ours is one of the first studies to focus on Arabic content, while most literature focuses on English content. Our findings yield new important insights about how social media is used by radical militant groups to target the Arab-speaking world, and reveal important patterns in their propaganda efforts.

THE EXPRESSION OF THREAT IN JIHADIST PROPAGANDA

This study investigates the expression of threat in jihadist propaganda from a semantico-pragmatic perspective. The analysis was conducted on the two official online magazines published by Daesh: the English Dabiq , and the French Dar al-Islam . Since the two magazines address two different readerships, it was hypothesised that differences in the way threat is expressed would be identified. The combination of both qualitative and quantitative approaches has allowed us to examine quantitative results in a more detailed way and, therefore, to obtain more solid results. This study revealed that the two magazines differ in the way threat is verbalised.

Jihadist Propaganda as a Threat Indicator: The Case of Spain

ABSTRACTThe present article examines the relevance of jihadist propaganda as an indicator of the threat from terrorism. To that end, it uses jihadist propaganda output referring to Spain as a case study. It proposes an instrument of measurement based on content analysis, in which the origin, format, content, and distribution method of the materials are taken as categories. The results offer empirical evidence regarding the seriousness of the terrorist threat against Spain, a country that is particularly exposed due to its historical and geographical singularities and its status as the victim of an attack deemed paradigmatic in the minds of jihadists.

The Rise of Jihadist Propaganda on Social Networks

Using a dataset of over 1.9 million messages posted on Twitter by about 25,000 ISIS members, we explore how ISIS makes use of social media to spread its propaganda and to recruit militants from the Arab world and across the globe. By distinguishing between violence-driven, theological, and sectarian content, we trace the connection between online rhetoric and key events on the ground. To the best of our knowledge, ours is one of the first studies to focus on Arabic content, while most literature focuses on English content. Our findings yield new important insights about how social media is used by radical militant groups to target the Arab-speaking world, and reveal important patterns in their propaganda efforts.

Pro-Daesh jihadist propaganda. A study of social media and video games

<i>The fight that Europe and the West must wage against jihadist terrorism will take some time, but if we live up to our values of integration and democracy, we will come out of it soon. As Giovanni Falcone, the Italian judge killed by the Mafia, once said about the Mafia: “It is a human phenomenon, and as all human phenomena has a start and an evolution, it will have also an end”.</i><br><br> <i>Jihadis have been using Twitter at least since 2010, with the Shabaab joining the site in December 2011, but never before to this extent. One early adapter of Twitter, the Afghan Taliban, began to establish their social media presence in December 2010, through which they issued brief bulletins about their actions and alerts for forthcoming communiqués. Many of the most prominent jihadi groups have followed the same path, including the Shabaab al-Mujahideen, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The content of these Twitter accounts has tended to closely mirror material released to jihadi forums. For example, the Afghan Taliban may post the text of a communiqué to their website, to a jihadi forum, and to the Twitter account of one of their spokesmen. Mirroring jihadi groups, elements of the online jihadi community have also migrated to social media sites, with prominent forums such as Shumukh al-Islam and Ansar al- Mujahideen English Forum creating Twitter accounts to publicise notable releases and discussions. Concurrently, many individual jihadis and jihadi supporters have joined Twitter, enthusiastically circulating propaganda among themselves and promoting it to potential recruits. Yet, the benefits conferred by social networking come with a substantial cost: social networking platforms can sow great confusion if known official accounts are deleted and re-established or if there are multiple accounts claiming to represent a specific jihadi group. In order to reach the new official accounts, followers must be able to distinguish the legitimate social media accounts of jihadi groups from non-authenticated users, which is a level of ambiguity that is not found on jihadi forums.</i>