A Tale of Two Caliphates: Comparing Islamic State’s Internal and External Messaging Priorities

TY - GEN

T1 - A Tale of Two Caliphates: Comparing Islamic State’s Internal and External Messaging Priorities

AU - Mahlouly, Dounia

AU - Winter, Charles Hope

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - While it is possible to derive a very rough estimate of Islamic State’s local public diplomacy through secondhand reporting, the intricacies of these operations remain elusive. Moreover, the group’s Internet propaganda corpus, while abundant, cannot be used as a proxy for the totality of its local communications operations, because it is not representative of the whole: traditional media products constitute but one portion of the organisation’s overall propaganda arsenal. Recognising this, this paper approaches the problem from a different angle, attempting to better understand how and why Islamic State communicates in-theatre through the lens of two of its most important publications – al-Naba, its Arabic-language newspaper, which appears to be designed primarily for offline dissemination in the caliphate itself, and Rumiyah, its foreign-language electronic magazine, which only ever appeared online. Using content analysis to identify and compare each publication’s internal (local) and external (global) media priorities over the four-month period between September and December 2016, we develop an empirical evaluation of how the group engages in target audience differentiation.

AB - While it is possible to derive a very rough estimate of Islamic State’s local public diplomacy through secondhand reporting, the intricacies of these operations remain elusive. Moreover, the group’s Internet propaganda corpus, while abundant, cannot be used as a proxy for the totality of its local communications operations, because it is not representative of the whole: traditional media products constitute but one portion of the organisation’s overall propaganda arsenal. Recognising this, this paper approaches the problem from a different angle, attempting to better understand how and why Islamic State communicates in-theatre through the lens of two of its most important publications – al-Naba, its Arabic-language newspaper, which appears to be designed primarily for offline dissemination in the caliphate itself, and Rumiyah, its foreign-language electronic magazine, which only ever appeared online. Using content analysis to identify and compare each publication’s internal (local) and external (global) media priorities over the four-month period between September and December 2016, we develop an empirical evaluation of how the group engages in target audience differentiation.

KW - Online

KW - Propaganda

KW - Islamic State

M3 - Other contribution

PB - VOX-Pol Network of Excellence for Research in Violent Online Political Extremism

ER -