The unknown soldiers: Media Operatives

The online release of a document entitled Media Operative, You are a Mujahid Too, in April 2016, on the official propaganda channel on social networking of the group put on debate the media strategy used and how it frames the information war. Since the capture of Mosul in 2014, its strategy changed, becoming more appealing and investing in an avalanche of media products to insert Daesh into global public discourse.

 

The followers of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi weaponized the internet through three axes, with tripartite information arsenal. According to the study made by Charlies Winter, from the ICSR, these central messaging are made of an appealing narrative, messages that directly respond to the media campaign against Daesh and ofensive tatic. The media operatives first make an effort to change the status quo of negative aspects, using the so-called Islamic State Truth, with an alternative offer of existence that extend to the sympathetic audience as well, creating a participatory identity. Then, there´s a direct response to the media campaign and deceptive ways used to dishearten, alarm and discourage Muslims of joining Daesh. Finally, these operatives use the media as a psychological weapon that, in some extension, can even substitute military and terrorist attacks and have the power of an atomic bomb. In the report http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Media-jihad_web.pdf

 

The use of communication by Daesh to create a global consciousness of their existence is not new but there has been a shift in the technology used to spread it, with the inception of the Internet. Through the reading of the report Media Jihad: The Islamic State´s Doctrine Warfare (http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Media-jihad_web.pdf) It is possible to understand the impact of these media changes on the spread of extremist ideologies throughout the years:

 

 

In the document released by Daesh in April – studied by Charlie Winter – it is clear that, for the extremist group, the support from social media disseminators is equally important than the soldiers in Iraq and Syria. It´s a promise of a lower risk participation with the same impact of a material war. The battle on the media has become so important that once Musad al-Zarqawi, the erstwhile leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, said “We are in a battle and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of media”.

 

According to Charlie Winter, who wrote the report Media Jihad: The Islamic State´s Doctrine Warfare, “understanding the group´s approach to information warfare today is a requisite step towards preparing for its replicative manifestations in the future”.

 

The full report can be accessed here: http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Media-jihad_web.pdf

 

By Ingrid Mariz