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Since the declaration of the Caliphate in 2014, the Islamic State became a prominent protagonism of contemporary political debate, especially for its unprecedented media flow. Moving from an already vast literature on the topic, the chapter will analyze the video-testaments produced by IS as an internal propaganda format, able to build a sense of community between the fighters and to inspire new generations to join the jihadi effort. After connecting this visual practice with its immediate predecessor (al-Qaeda martyrs’ video-testaments), the chapter will provide an in-depth analysis of these videos, stressing the role of memory and inspiration, as well as their ability to produce a certain narrative of what it means to be a true Muslim.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Although researchers know a great deal about persuasive messages that encourage terrorism, they know far less about persuasive messages that denounce terrorism and little about how these two sides come together. We propose a conceptualization that distinguishes a message’s support for an act from its support for the ideology underlying an act. Our prediction is tested using corpus-linguistic analysis of 250 counter-extremist messages written by Muslims and U.K. officials and a comparison set of 250 Muslim extremist messages. Consistent with our prediction, Muslim extremist and Muslim counter-messages show disagreement on terrorist actions but agreement in ideological aspects, while U.K. officials’ counter-messages show disagreement with both Muslim extremists’ acts and ideology. Our findings suggest that counter-messages should not be viewed as a homogenous group and that being against violent extremism does not necessarily equate to having positive perceptions of Western values.

White Supremacist groups have been an active participant in the digital world since its inception. However, as this technology evolved so too did the opportunities it provided to various iterations of far-right political groups and organizations. Though it would be incorrect to say that the evolving realities of the digital world are the central cause for far-right radicalization, it did provide the opportunity by which those individuals already holding extremist attitudes and beliefs to better consolidate those beliefs, while also embracing a community of like-minded individuals across the country and around the world. Attitudes and beliefs, which were perhaps less welcome in normal day-to-day experience could now be shared and validated in ways that furthered this process extremism and made the possibility of violence more likely.