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Emerging communication technologies, and social media platforms in particular, play an increasingly important role
in the radicalization and mobilization processes of violent and non-violent extremists (Archetti, 2015; Cohen et al.,
2014; Farwell, 2014; Klausen, 2015). However, the extent to which extremists utilize social media, and whether it
influences terrorist outcomes, is still not well understood (Conway, 2017). This research brief expands the current
knowledge base by leveraging newly collected data on the social media activities of 479 extremists in the PIRUS
dataset who radicalized between 2005 and 2016.
1 This includes descriptive analyses of the frequency of social
media usage among U.S. extremists, the types of social media platforms used, the differences in the rates of social
media use by ideology and group membership, the purposes of social media use, and the impact of social media on
foreign fighter travel and domestic terrorism plots.

This chapter will examine the role of the Internet and associated technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing (CC) in the process of radicalisation to terrorism and violent extremism. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the role of online environments in facilitating communication and the spread of extremist ideology, as opposed to operational and strategic recruiting functions of the Internet. Before assessing the debate, this chapter shall define two key concepts, radicalisation and violent extremism. Firstly, the chapter will provide an assessment of academic literature that has perpetuated a false offline and online dichotomy. Then, the chapter will demonstrate the new communicative role of technology within violent extremist movements since the emergence of Web 2.0. Following this, Sageman’s (Leaderless Jihad: Terror networks in the twenty-first century, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) ‘bunch of guys’ bottom-up framework will be employed to understand how the process of radicalisation can be facilitated and amplified by the digital age, referring to the concepts of moral outrage, othering, virtual communities and echo chambers. Lastly, contemporary literature that considers the interplay between online and offline domains will be explored.

Terrorism, in all its manifestations, affects us all. The use of the Internet to further terrorist purposes disregards national borders, amplifying the potential impact on victims. By highlighting cases and best practices that respond to this unique challenge, the present publication has two aims: first, to promote a better understanding of the ways in which communications technologies may be misused in furtherance of acts of terrorism and, second, to increase collaboration among Member States, so that effective criminal justice responses to this transnational challenge can be developed.

Operations involving the capture, processing, and transmission of terrorist events, campaigns, or images produce effects well beyond the representational/informational functions of media. This article examines several unspoken effects involved in the mediation of terrorism. We analyze the extent to which several mechanisms and operations of western media may be complicit in, if not fundamental to, the global production and administration of terror, particularly at the level of its image and what we call virality. We theorize the ways in which media not only “mediate” terror, but also function to regulate and/or administer it and, in particular, to exacerbate, amplify, and proliferate images and activities of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) across global networks of digital exchange. We argue that key to understanding the strategies and circulating effects of ISIS’s media involvement is the tendency of viral media operations to overproduce, overextend, and oversaturate. The condition of oversaturation denotes a hyperactive global media circuitry that is collapsing under its own weight. This condition reflects a strategic tendency of terror, which underlies all mediatic processing of images deployed by ISIS. It also reveals a vulnerability for terrorist strategy to exacerbate and exhaust the hyperactivity of media, and thus to accelerate the implosive collapse of the globally networked system. We theorize how implicit and unintended effects or outputs of the mediatic processing of terrorist meanings, images, and discourses may work to overstimulate the global system to the point of its reversal, exhaustion, or implosion.

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.

This study maps the surface web information ecosystem exploited by the Islamic State (IS) and its followers between December 2020 and June 2021. Open-source intelligence investigation allowed a massive online presence of Daesh, manifested by hundreds of communication channels, to be detected. Its propaganda dissemination was founded mainly on one “central” Arabic domain, linked to a constellation of auxiliary standalone websites, blogs, encrypted messaging apps, as well as file-sharing and streaming services. Aside from it, the Islamic State utilised other surface web environments, including numerous Internet Archive profiles and a network of communication channels established by Afaaq Electronic Foundation. This study also shows that URLs banned by law enforcement in 2020 and 2021 were usually quickly restored by the IS’s media offices.