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Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is the first terrorist organization to use the internet efficiently to spread its ideology and recruit followers in the region and abroad: but it is not an anomaly. In fact it is reflective of what we can expect to come from terrorist groups in the future. But technology is just one part of the problem. What will terrorist organizations in seven years’ time look like? Chatham House hosted Jared Cohen and a panel of guest speakers in January 2016 to explore these questions.

“Social Apocalypse: The role of communications technology in mediating apocalyptic communities”, originally published by Brookings Institution on 28 May 2015

Islamic State videos have often been associated with savage violence and beheadings. An in-depth scrutiny however reveals another striking feature: that female bodies are absent, blurred or mute. Examining a few Islamic State videos in depth, the article suggests that the invisibility of women in tandem with the ostentatious visibility of male bodies enable gendered and embodied spectators to indulge in homoerotic as well as heterosexual imaginaries. In contrast to studies on visual security and online radicalization which assert that images affect an audience, this article focuses on the interaction between video and audience and argues that spectators are not only rational and emotional but embodied and gendered as well. Islamic State videos do not only attract western foreign fighters through religious–ideological rhetoric or emotional impact but also through gendered forms of pleasure and desire that enable carnal imagination and identification. The article probes the analytical purchase of carnal aesthetics and spectatorship.

The Woolwich attack in May 2013 has led to a spate of hate crimes committed against Muslim communities in the United Kingdom. These incidents include Muslim women being targeted for wearing the headscarf and mosques being vandalized. While street level Islamophobia remains an important area of investigation, an equally disturbing picture is emerging with the rise in online anti-Muslim abuse. This article argues that online Islamophobia must be given the same level of attention as street level Islamophobia. It examines 500 tweets from 100 different Twitter users to examine how Muslims are being viewed and targeted by perpetrators of online abuse via the Twitter search engine, and offers a typology of offender characteristics.

In response to calls for more empirical studies in organizational communication to further develop the Four Flows Model of CCO, this analysis examines Daesh’s use of visual messaging strategies as a means of institutional positioning in the global communications environment. To do so, the study analyzes over 2000 religious and state images displayed in the group’s English/Arabic publications. The findings highlight the critical role of both the quantity and nature of visual output in the Four Flows Model. The study also expands current understandings of institutional positioning over time, through organizational expansion/constraint, and in relation to various targeted online communities.

VOX-Pol Blog post.