During ISIS’s successful campaign to take control over Mosul and other areas, ISIS sough to achieve the maximum benefit from these advancements. The shock that resulted from the quick fall of Mosul and the unorganized retreats of Iraqi forces helped media outlets of the terrorist organization disseminating messages glorifying its “victories” and promising a new Islamic State. “Remaining and expanding” became its main slogan because of that period, showing even thought ISIS’s was somehow defeated, their intentions are well known and won’t change.
As we mentioned earlier, ISIS managed to efficiently use social media and some genres of traditional media to communicate its messages. They also found a lot of allies, mostly individuals, who wanted to join and take part of their ideology of “successes”. The way ISIS spread their messages are through:
- Various jihadi websites and forums that links all the jihadists over the world.
- Publications and online magazines. ISIS has quite a few online newspapers and e-books, made primarly through its Al-Hayat Media Center. They increased the number of publications after the fall of Mosul, releasing online newspaper such as Dabiq, which was available in several languages. The primary goal of the Dabiq publication were recruitment, indoctrination and propaganda dissemination.
- Traditional media like Al-Bayan radio station, which launched in Mosul in August 2014, together with its billboards, slogans and teachings.
- Media items such as animations and short videos documenting the combat achievements of the organization or the lives of civilians under its control. One popular example was a collection of films named ‘The Clash of Swords,’ which documented ISIS’s military operations against Iraqi forces before and after its conquest of Mosul.
- Social networks, particularly Twitter and Facebook, have become the key platforms for ISIS to distribute their messages. Both through official accounts or those of followers and sympathizers, ISIS has managed to build an powerful ‘news service’ that has disseminated and strengthened its interpretation of events.
When its territories grew, ISIS saw the need not only to grow its outreach, but also to appeal to a larger and more diversified audience. Its propaganda was based on an elementary kind of segmentation of the market. Some similar ideas were echoed in the speeches and messages, which provided a sense of unity and formed the central message of the organization. The notion that the Islamic State is ‘here to stay’ that ‘all true Muslims will be part of its jihad’ and that ‘it will prevail against its enemies’ had become quite recurrent.
Another aspect that has to be taken into consideration when it comes to ISIS messages is that their messages differ based on who the speaker is and who the audience is. Their key leaders, such as ex leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi or the current spokesperson, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, have consistently sought to represent these major themes without taking into account the details of the governace or the constant battle. Many of these messages are posted online, though not on a particular ISIS official media channel, as the CTC (Counter Terrorism Center) study indicates that ISIS has discarded several of its official websites in favour of unofficial channels and social forums. All of this makes monitoring ISIS on social media a struggle, as the posts they share on non-official sites are mixed up with a vast volume of non-official material generated by activists and supporters. ISIS sends its messages to three main audiences: the local population living under its authority, the external world – including Muslims living outside its territory – and non-Muslims, particularly Western governments and citizens. Normally messages differ in content, language and complexity, depending on the category of individuals they target.
The messages of ISIS are a specific blend of aggression and ideology. For example, Nazi propaganda did not celebrate the genocide – it kept its brutality and propaganda separate from each other. In constrat, ISIS shamelessly uses its atrocities in its communication, presenting a caliphate utopia in which the streets are lined with bodies. Another important factor of what ISIS is seeking to show in their messages is the focus on public peace – something that weakens their activism of ultra-violence. ISIS portrays its empire as a controlled state delivering services , such as health care and the police force, with a separate legal system in the areas it has previously controlled. They imprisoned people for crimes and made sure that such penalties were effectively communicated in their propaganda messages.
Their messages have varied over time, depending on what the group’s strategic objective was and what the situation on the battlefield looked like. For example, after ISIS re-established its caliphate in 2014, its public messaging portrayed the movement as a triumphant, powerful entity that protected Islam. After that, in 2014 and 2015, ISIS described the policies and framework of the caliphate. They wanted to attract more newcomers through their ‘ordinary’ lifestyle, offering protection, health care and religious education. ISIS weakened in 2016, and their attention on messages changed dramatically, seeking to cover for news of their military losses. According to Europol, ISIS has no longer stressed the ideology of violent Islam. Instead, they called for revenge for presumed ‘attacks’ against Islam. ISIS believes that Sunni Muslims are under threat by a ‘alleged Western-Jewish-Shi’I alliance.’ The Islamic State no longer talks of its achievements and accomplishments, but rather justifies its horrific crimes by presenting itself as the victims of Western countries.
In the last decade, ISIS has become a difficult group to discuss, due to their way of promoting cases of public violence and the wounds that the organization has left internationally. Nevertheless, another explanation why this organization has terrorized the globe for such a long time is that it is not a country or a part of the world that can be opposed on conventional terms. They are essentially a network of individuals and entities that are dispersed around uncertain and undetermined locations. When ISIS managed to establish such a huge online media presence, especially with the use of their uncensored videos, they started to look more visible and convincing to outsiders, and even though the organization lost a lot of its territories, numbers, and troops, their media establishment used to indicate otherwise. In the video I am about to analyze, entitled ‘No Respite,’ the graphic elements and patterns of the video will be analyzed to examine how and why ISIS tried to prove that they were a fortified nation.
‘No Respite’ was a video produced by the al-Hayat Media Center back in November 24, 2015, and was firstly posted on YouTube, but versions are repeatedly removed due to YouTube policies on terrorist speech. It is difficult to determine how many total views the videos had accumulated, but one version of the video had about 700,000 YouTube views, 3,800 shares, and more than 2,300 comments back in April 2016. This video is an animated video that uses still images and a lot of CGI (computer-generated images) effects. The animation style is known as a multimedia category called ‘militainment,’ a abreviation of ‘military entertainment’ media. This form of media animation is often played in military-themed video games. In ‘No Respite,’ the quality of the graphics feels like the viewer is being caught in the frames of a military video game , making the viewer excited by the harshest of vioelence while being less sensitive to the actual violence of ISIS.
