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This study investigates how a far-right extremist group, The Base, enacts communicative resilience (CR) strategies across digital platforms despite deplatforming efforts. In our empirical analysis, we conducted a content analysis of 69 conversations about bans that occurred in The Base’s encrypted chatrooms on Matrix and Wire between 2018 and 2020. We examined if and how the CR processes outlined in the communication theory of resilience (CTR) applied to far-right extremists groups operating online. Our analysis shows that deplatforming, while disruptive, triggers CR processes that activate collaborative discovery of new methods to remain resilient. Additionally, we discovered an additional, online performative process of persistent presence in response to a perceived constant, existential threat. That strategy demonstrates operational capacity, reinforces group-based identities, accrues social capital, and performs a proven capacity to challenge detractors. By assessing The Base’s online dynamics, this study contributes to broader conversations on mediated CTR, deplatforming, extremism, and the role of CR in political legitimation.

Extreme militant groups use their media campaigns to share information, recruit and radicalize followers, share worldviews, and seek public diplomacy ends. While previous research documents that various on-the-ground events correspond to changes in the groups’ messaging strategies, studies of how competing militant groups influence one another’s media campaigns are nascent. This study helps fill that gap by examining how successful attacks by one militant group correspond to changes in both the perpetrating and competing groups’ visual media messaging strategies. It examines attack success through the lens of violent acts that result in direct impact (measured through death counts) and indirect impact (measured through traditional media coverage levels). The study utilizes a content analysis of 1882 authority-related images in AQAP’s al-Masra newsletter and ISIS’s al-Naba’ newsletter appearing three issues before and after each attack, and a chi-square analysis comparing four ISIS attack conditions (high death/high media, high death/low media, low death/high media, and low death/low media). The findings show that a high number of resulting deaths, rather than a high level of media coverage, correspond to changes in the media campaigns of both the perpetrators and the competing groups, with key differences in visual content based on group identity.

Daesh’s centralized media operations provide a steady stream of media products to citizens living in and around its controlled territories, with the result that several nations occupied or adjacent to the group have emerged as many of the most fruitful recruiting grounds for new members. To better understand the argumentation strategies targeting such audiences, this study examines the 119 infographics in the first 50 issues of Daesh’s official weekly Arabic newsletter, al-Naba’. The findings suggest that through a patterned application of statistical, historical, religious, and scientific arguments from authority to predictable topical areas, the infographics in al-Naba’ reinforce Daesh as a key source of information for the citizenry of the proclaimed caliphate.