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For too long, the immensity of Islamic State’s propaganda machine has obscured a rational
understanding of it. The organisation’s media strategists are producing high-definition depictions
of the most abhorrent brutality on an industrial scale, ensuring that jihadism is digitalised and
brought firmly into the 21st century. The days when we saw grainy video footage played on Al
Jazeera and propaganda was limited to stagnant speeches made by terrorist leaders are long gone.
Islamic State has revolutionised jihadist messaging, by jettisoning operational security in the
pursuit of dynamism, so that it can produce propaganda that tells a story, exciting or appalling its
viewers, depending on who they are.
This has not gone unnoticed, it is forever being discussed in the pages of our newspapers and on
the screens of our televisions – ‘high production value’ and ‘high definition’ are the new buzzwords
of today’s terrorism. While they may be appropriate terms, they have stopped us from rationally
assessing the organisation behind the glossy propaganda.
This report seeks to redress that situation, presenting the most extensive analysis of the
organisation’s propaganda strategy to date. It demonstrates that Islamic State’s media operation
is carefully calculated, with jihadist videographers producing bespoke content for a wide range of
audiences. It shows that the group’s brutality is a red herring; that the violence depicted is a result
of the propagandists’ desire to outrage hostile audiences abroad and gratify their supporters at
home.
It is only after we have achieved an understanding of the motivations and objectives that drive the
Islamic State media machine that we can begin to challenge it effectively. How, for example, can
we be expected to develop a counter-narrative without knowing what narratives we are
countering? How can we propose effective counter messaging strategies unless we understand
what and how exactly the messages that we are countering are being disseminated, and to what
purpose?
With hundreds of citizens from across the world travelling to join Islamic State’s terrorist
bastardisation of the ‘caliphate’, the situation has never been more critical. Extremist supporters
of Islamic State have already carried out attacks in countries around the world, from North
America to Australasia, and the threat of their intensification increases every day. It is imperative
that we – practitioners, policymakers and publics – better understand just how the messages of
indoctrination are delivered and hence what drives these individuals to waste life in the name of
Islamic State’s violent Islamist fantasy.
QUILLIAM CHARLIE WINTER
5
With this report, Quilliam’s Senior Researcher on Transnational Jihadism, Charlie Winter, has
made a most important contribution to the global effort to counter Islamic State. Through his
systematic research – which, over the course of the ‘caliphate’s’ first full year, involved daily
monitoring of terrorist activity on both Arabic- and English-language social media – he has been
able to critically assess the Islamic State media machine, both up close and from afar.
Through his assessment of Islamic State propaganda in aggregate, after his documenting of well
over a thousand individual propaganda campaigns, Charlie has been able to distil its
unprecedented jihadist brand into six key narratives: brutality, mercy, victimhood, war, belonging
and utopia. With these themes and their relative prevalence in mind, it was possible for him to
determine which audiences Islamic State targets in each of its campaigns: active opponents,
international publics, active members, potential recruits, disseminators, proselytizers and
enlisters. Evidently, the Islamic State propagandists know their game.
This war cannot be won through military and political means alone; it is as much a war of
information and propaganda as anything else and, currently, it is fatally imbalanced to the
advantage of Islamic State.
What this report makes very clear is that we need to respond in kind – relying upon someone else
to produce a panacea to it, a single counter-narrative that is universally appealing to all audiences,
is a fruitless pursuit. If the international community is to effectively approach the Islamic State
crisis, it must do so in a synchronised, comprehensive manner and revolutionise its approach to
terrorist propaganda.
Whether it is by matching the approach that Islamic State use or the sheer quantity of the content
they produce – an average of three videos and more than fifteen photographic reports are
circulated per day – we must respond to 21st Century jihadism by ensuring that we too are
operating in the same century.

The menace presented by Islamic State’s (IS) self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ is uniquely challenging on a
number of levels. Tactically, its military operations demand lateral thinking, since the group exists as a
nebulous, swarming network constantly seeking to expand its reach. Strategically, too, it is pioneering
new insurgent methods, establishing numerous, complex administrative and institutional foundations
in Iraq and Syria that are already deeply rooted and sure to prolong the war for years to come, as the
middle ground between civilian and soldier is systematically destroyed. It is in psychological terms,
though, that IS has truly transformed the state of play. Its vast propaganda operation is unrivalled,
involving devoted media teams from West Africa to Afghanistan who work relentlessly, day and night,
in the production and dissemination of the ‘caliphate’ brand. So far, most of our attempts to
meaningfully mitigate IS’s ability to globally engage have been left floundering.
Numerically speaking, it is an uphill struggle. Though there are some commendable efforts being
undertaken by counter violent extremism practitioners and civil society organisations, they are dwarfed
in size by IS’s media behemoth, which produces on average 38 individual batches of propaganda each
day – videos, photo essays, articles and audio programmes. Apart from practicalities, the counter effort
is, from the offset, structurally impaired from success. Indeed, the cult of the counter-narrative has left
coalition partners working from within a reactive paradigm, something that means it is perpetually on
the back foot when it comes to presenting an alternative to what IS offers.
The difficulties we face in the information war on IS are not something of which we can opt out. Hence,
we need to recognise our weaknesses and circumnavigate the obstacles we face. Arguably the most
damaging of those weaknesses has been a persistent tendency to misunderstand just what it is that IS
is doing – myriad questions have been asked, and most left unanswered.
In the Quilliam Foundation’s latest research into IS propaganda, Senior Researcher Charlie Winter
presents us with a truly ground-breaking window into the mind of the propagandist, demystifying the
media war more than ever before. Between 17 July and 15 August 2015, the Islamic month of Shawwal,
Charlie compiled an exhaustive archive of IS propaganda, creating not just a snapshot of its output, but
a comprehensive, 30-day view of it.
Over the course of the data collection period, he recorded 1146 separate propaganda “events”,
discrete batches of data that were disseminated with a view to bolstering the IS world view, be that
through graphic violence or millenarian scenes of vividly lit fairgrounds. Each event was recorded
according to 7 variables and then grouped by narrative and subcategory, enabling detailed analysis. By
postponing any assessment until the data had been collected in full, Charlie was able to circumvent IS’s
tactical saturation of the Internet and consider its messaging in an aggregated, considered manner. In
so doing, as important trends, iniquities and anomalies that are otherwise impossible to discern become
strikingly apparent, he has presented us with an important tactical and strategic insight into the virtual
‘caliphate’.
When it comes to IS propaganda, it is imperative that we understand it in as granular and nuanced a
manner as possible. Using data to test the hypothesis of the July 2015 report ‘The Virtual ‘Caliphate’:
Understanding Islamic State’s Propaganda Strategy’, Charlie has illuminated the bare bones of the IS
brand. It is high time we recognised that there is no elixir that can deliver us from IS’ information
supremacy, no catch-all counter-narrative to undercut its carefully cultivated and choreographed
image. In this absence, we must instead seek to enrich our understanding. The IS ‘caliphate’ is marketing
itself on an industrial scale. If we are to destroy its brand, we must first be able to fathom its depths.

17 November: In the wake of November’s deadly attacks in Paris, Charlie Winter (Georgia State University) gives a preview of a forthcoming Legatum Institute report, of which he is co-author, that looks at the role of the internet in transforming disinformation and propaganda from groups such as ISIS. More information: http://www.li.com/events/propaganda-a…

This report compares two archives of official Daesh media that were compiled four years apart. It explores the nuances of the group’s worldview and tracks how external and internal situational exigencies impacted them during its formative years as a caliphate. It finds that the organisation’s media infrastructure was about one-tenth as productive in mid-2019 as it was in mid-2015. The data also show that it was spending more time covering the pursuits of its global network in 2019 than in 2015. Finally, the data point towards a substantial thematic rearrangement in the organisation’s overarching propaganda narrative that manifested in it shifting its story away from millenarian utopianism and towards military denialism. In sum, the data indicate that by 2019 Daesh’s propagandists were far less productive and their aggregate product was more international and less focused on civilian issues. This shift points towards a new phase in the group’s political marketing trajectory, one focused more on survival than on expansion.

This report compares two archives of official Daesh media that were compiled four years apart. It explores the nuances of the group’s worldview and tracks how external and internal situational exigencies impacted them during its formative years as a caliphate. It finds that the organisation’s media infrastructure was about one tenth as productive in mid-2019 as it was in mid-2015. The data also show that it was spending more time covering the pursuits of its global network in 2019 than in 2015. Finally, the data point towards a substantial thematic rearrangement in the organisation’s overarching propaganda narrative that manifested in it shifting its story away from millenarian utopianism and towards military denialism. In sum, the data indicate that by 2019 Daesh’s propagandists were far less productive and their aggregate product was more international and less focused on civilian issues. This shift points towards a new phase in the group’s political marketing trajectory, one focused more on survival than on expansion.

This article explores how propaganda can be used to construct counter-factual visual narratives at times of war. Specifically, it examines how the Islamic State communicated its way through the 100-day-long battle for east Mosul, which was launched by the coalition and its allies in October 2016. Drawing on Jacques Ellul’s 1962 theory of propaganda, it uses qualitative content analysis to decipher the 1,261 media products published online by the group during the first phase of its defence of the city. The author contends that, even though it was resoundingly defeated there by January, the global legacy of this battle, which was used as a testing ground for a series of potent innovations in insurgent strategic communication, will endure long into the future.