The creation of videos is strategy of ISIS propaganda. In recent years, it has gone into the development of high-quality Hollywood films, which involve images in addition to the visual vocabulary as advertising methods in addition to the cinematic marketing language. ISIS back in 2014, released videos with different personalities such as a German rapper and ISIS militants. In the video you can see a snowball fight, that is supposedly optimistic in the context of life in Syria and the Jihad: “Now you see…here in Syria, we also can have fun!…That’s jihad, jihad makes fun…and we have fun here with the children…Come on, we invite you to jihad!”
Part of the ISIS’s Al-Hayat Media Center promotional videos, ISIS started to upload a series of short videos on YouTube entitled ‘Mujatweets.’ The videos were planned to portray ISIS as a humanitarian organization, loved by people, and build up a better society. Most videos are in English, indicating that they are primarily designed as a recruitment method for western audiences. The first episode depicts a simple European recruit, a former German rapper known as Deso Dogg, who left Europe to fight alongside ISIS in Syria, singing a German song praising ISIS.
The second episode features scenes of children having fun with ISIS extremists. The third episode shows an apparent Syrian chef — a civilian on a daily basis — who discusses how wonderful life is now that ISIS rules his territory. The fourth episode, published in July 2014, follows a slightly different route, tracking a presumably German ISIS leader who visits injured rebels in the hospital, telling viewers, ‘Come to the Land of Honor and Look for Shahada (Martyrdom).’ The fourth episode is in German with English subtitles. In the sixth episode, a member of ISIS speaks in French, claiming that it is an obligation for Muslims to immigrate to the Islamic State. In the seventh episode, shots of a sandwich shop and a bustling market place aim to attract newcomers with scenes of abundance. There are 8 Mujatweets videos in total, last being released in 2014.
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Al-Hayat Media Center’s promotional videos does not show only the good life and part of the ISIS, they also release videos with a stronger emotional impact. ISIS’s videos of beheading got released at an impressive pace, all having the same ritual, the prisoner is forced to kneel and they are always wearing an orange jumpsuit of Guantanamo inmates. This ritual is part of the distinctive way of the caliphate to show their power, making the inmates to recite curses against the West before they are beheaded with a knife. The tool they use may vary, for example, on 9 February 2015, an IS citizen accused of witchcraft was beheaded with an ax and not a knife. Again, the diversification of death instruments has an important symbolic and communication impact. Their aim was and will always be to terrorize the West with an easy-to-access media product from all platforms, including mobile ones. This makes these videos instantly noticeable, despite their highly graphic content, and is a danger to all.
John Cantlie is a unique event in the history of decapitating videos. He is a British reporter who was abducted in Syria in November 2012, but his case was not like the rest of the hostages, because at some point his case took a different turn and presented us with yet another phase of threat that affects not just military strategists, but each and every one of us, making us protagonists in a developing narrative. His first broadcast was on September 18, 2014, with a video titled ‘Lend me your ears’ and captioned ‘Messages from a British detainee.’
From first, nobody could really understand what ISIS did, John being a prisoner in front of two cameras, lying on a table, ready to deliver a statement to the world. He is sharing the story of his abduction, and one minute in the video, he says, “It’s true, I am a prisoner, that I cannot deny, but seeing as I have been abandoned by my government”. He tells the story of his kidnapping, and one minute into the video, he says, “It’s true, I am a prisoner, that I cannot deny, but seeing as I have been abandoned by my government”.
ISIS’s actions with prisoner Cantlie is now clear that it will become an tool of the Caliphate’s counter-information plan. That was the moment when the plans were changed and the communication rules were overturned. A modern reality existed that was different from the perception that everybody had up to that point. There was another aspect of the tale that could be revealed, Cantlie was the host of this show, but still the prisoner. What we see is so skilfully examined that it makes us think if even more than vicious beheadings, the jihad’s most brutal weapon against its rivals would be none other than us. This tool feels so efficient because it hides its cruelty behind the narration, and it makes us forget that John Cantlie is a prisoner and confer him the fake role of narrator that so logically fits his British accent.
In the third episode of the ‘Inside’ show, the clever operator of the ‘Cantlie Operation’ made the British reporter describe the situation in a more sinister manner, at a time when White House was considering taking his Marines home to liberate Mosul. The British told us that the fighters of the Islamic State are eager for war and explains that the Americans are best off not praising themselves, as no action can help them succeed on the battlefield, stating that this is a ‘win-win scenario’ for the Islamic State. Throughout his long speech, Cantlie lists the magazines, the posts, the editorials of the previous weeks, and the one thing that was not giving away his present condition was the orange suit. After that, when John showed besieged in Kobane on 28 October to show us the other side of the reality, it was very difficult to remember that he was a prisoner, not a reporter on the side of the Islamic State.
This video is unusual, because for the first time, John Cantlie is portrayed as an IS fighter, he’s no longer wearing an orange suit, he’s all dressed in black. His speech is a challenge to the U.S. policy, he seemed so much calmer, his beard looks longer and, most importantly, his tale reveals a much more detailed direction, a verisimilitude skilfully recreated by well-known codes, resulting from the use of language, video graphics, and light; from narrative sequences in which we relax, in spite of ourselves, and pursue the voice unaware that the protagonist could be killed at the end of any report, or why not even during one. He says, ‘The situation is calm, there are few shots, as you can here,’ and in closing he tells us that victory belongs to the mujaheddin who specializes in urban guerrilla warfare. The last episode of the “Inside” series was made on 9 February, when John was wearing a brown jacket, apparently in perfect health. That was the last time John Cantlie appeared in any ISIS videos.
What does this mean? It is difficult to say what. Perhaps the clever directors of the Islamic State are training him for another successful show, where he will be the anchor. Maybe, after all, that cannot be ruled out, it means that Cantlie is going to be executed, just like his prison mates. If this was the case, the execution process might have already taken place on the day the video was released. Still, the question is why should they get rid of such an effective storyteller? That is, after all, what the life or death of John Cantlie comes down to. But the latest updates about his situation, tells us that John is believed to still be alive, UK Security Minister Ben Wallace said in 2019.
John’s story can show us that ISIS’s communication strategy of their videos is not as simple as we thought it would be. They are trying to find new and better ways to influence us and our thinking about what the Islamic State really is.
On 16 November 2014, something changed with a terrifying 15-minute video showing the beheading of Kassig, who was an American aid worker. The killing takes place after a long introduction to the Islamic State, with pictures of the beheadings of a group of Syrian soldiers carried out by the Islamic State soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms and standing in a parade, but the explanation why this video is unusual is because for the first time, there was a beheading video of an American man, but there was no orange Guantanamo uniform and no speech. Many experts could presume that this is due to an emergency strategy: the normal procedure could not be performed because something went wrong during the execution.
Kassig had fought along different camps during the war and he may have refused to comply with the staging required by the ritual. However, in addition to this possible interpretation, a shift in style may have occurred, just like in the Cantlie’s videos series, for some specific reason, as part of an effective jihadist communication strategy. Beheading videos continue to be a distinctive mark of Islamic state, but in this case, the threat is even more explicit, direct and emotionally effective as the viewers can see the executioners faces, no longer hidden and they clearly have Western origins. The video shows the dangers of a terrorist attack in Europe, but also shows the type of challenge posed by capturing the ‘hearts and minds’ of young Europeans, which others believe is worse than a terrorist attack.
Evolution persists, another post is released online on 24 January 2015: Kenji Goto, one of the two Japanese people kept captive by IS, announces the killing of Haruna Yukawa. This was anticipated from the previous video, in which the two asked the Japanese government for a $200 million ransom, the same money that Japan had just agreed to fund the war against the caliphate. The standard protocol (orange jumpsuit for prisoners and executioner wearing a hood) is believed to be followed but the fellow prisoner reveals Yukawa’s cut head lying on his chest in a picture he holds in his hand, although the cruel act itself is not included.
This message leaves the payment opportunity available, without giving up the horrific effect of what happened. The skilful approach draws the viewer and builds a anticipation about what may soon follow: the first Japanese man to be behead. On January 27, a second public message from Kenji Goto Jogo to his family and the Janapese government was released. He has been forced to take a photo of the Jordanian pilot who has been kept captive by the Islamic State since Christmas, and he also says that he has only 24 hours left to live, and the pilot even less. Pressure was placed on the Jordanian government’s shoulders, asking for the release of the jihadist Sajid al-Rishwai in exchange for the Japanese and now the pilot.
Unfortunately, the case ends on 31 January with a 67-second video, created by al-Furaq and released on Twitter, which records the beheading of the Japanese journalist by the British jihadist John in accordance with the normal practice, though in a different location. A few days later, another video was released, showing Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasaesbeh standing in a square cage, pouring petrol or other flammable material on his orange clothes and trailing along the ground. After a trail of fire is set on his cage, he is seen standing as the flames kill him. The pilot was killed on 3 January, and most experts assume that the Jordanians were already aware of the pilot’s death, taking in consideration how they handled Islamic State’s request to release the terrorist that they had custody to.
The communication strategy related to the two abducted Japanese journalised followed two routes: on the one hand, it showed the typical terror-based approach, with the killer’s knife and the victim’s orange jumpsuit, but at the same time it offered actual information on the paying of the ransom, using the visual image metacommunication.
We can see again that the communication strategy of the Islamic State prevails: it was clear that the exchange of hostages was never a choice, but with the latest communication techniques found in these ISIS videos, we can see that they succeeded in modifying the normal style of beheadings and closing the case with a violent, burning video, which was held up for a month before being released. It is most likely that something had been orchestrated from the start to shift the viewpoint of Western audience and change a bit the content that they were starting to get used to and to drag viewers into the empathic communication of a tragic incident and set the trap for Western media who felt obligated to cover the story. Their communication strategy also sent a message towards the Jordanians, because this opposition has an army of 3000-4000 men that are already fighting with the jihadists, and it is also a threat to Islamic State’s neighboring countries, Jordan being a target for ISIS expansion and consolidation.
This was one of the many attempts of Islamic State to strengthen the institutionalization of their “ex-caliphate”. The additional objective is to promote a generalized and widespread conflict, which can be triggered by an outraged and understandable reaction to these images in Europe, a reaction obtained through violent videos. And, alongside the communication approach aimed at institutionalization, the emotional communication strategy emerges; these are all traps that IS has planned and that we run the risk of slipping into. The beheadings are part of the IS media products which are produced and distributed in accordance with a specific policy, a video edited as in the case of the Jordanian pilot can be comparable to a weapon in the current media war.
Overall, ISIS were shown to be able to adapt the changing conditions and new constraints. In fact, over time, jihadists have slowly migrated to encrypted messaging networks. Since 2013 to 2015-2016, their propaganda was freely accessible to potentially anyone on public sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. But, since mid-2015, before the response of governments and technology companies, jihadist have begun to prefer other, lesser-known and less-accessible sites, especially Telegram. However, Telegram started to remove and ban most of the jihadist posts and their supporters, and their channels that once were public started to becomve privated, making their accessibility decrease almost exponentially since, but that did not make ISIS to abandon the platform completely, and they still use it sometimes.
Besides all the propaganda that ISIS’s Al-Hayat media Center posts on different platforms, the web may also play a crucial role in recruiting radicals and terrorists. Particular attention should be paid to the alarming phenomenon of ‘cybercoaching’ terrorism. Extremists called ‘internet planners’ can target and direct unaffiliated radical sympathizers directly, only through the Web, in particular through the use of encrypted applications. A good example would be Rachid Kassim, one of ISIS’s best-known virtual planners. He was a former rapper from the French town of Roanne, who was reportedly killed in Mosul, Iraq, in July 2017. His Telegram channel helped to direct many recruits to carry out attacks in France. Another European international militant, the aforementioned Junaid Hussain, has carried out at least six terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States.
The phenomenon of “virtual entrepreneurship” was mainly accepted after an article published in 2017 by Hughes and Meleagrou-Hitchens, explained how out of a total of 38 ISIS inspired domestic plots and attacks in the United States between 1st March 2014, and 1st March 2017, involved some form of digital communication with virtual entrepreneurs. The main group that was dealing with the virtual recruitment and communication was based in Raqqa, Syria, and the FBI has nicknamed them “the Legion”, and the most important member of that group was Junaid Hussain , wich once was the third higest-ranked ISIS target on the Pentagon kill list.
The Islamic State has managed to make the most of social media (most of the time Facebook and Twitter), both as unique recruiting resources and as instruments that are synchronized with other media to accomplish wider objectives The importance of communication in the radicalization process is evident in the facts that, on 18 June 2013, led to the discovery of the death of Giuliano Delnevo in the fights in Syria agaisnt Bashar al-Assad. In 2008 Delnevo had converted to Islam, changed his name to Ibrahim, and had served in Syria for around a year. His case is a dramatic one, highlighting the impacts of the communication strategy of the ISIS. It reveals Abdullah Azzam (Al-Qaeda’s co-founder) as his role model in one of his last posts published on 12th February 2013. Radicalization across the Internet and access to different jihadist speeches motivated the Genoese young man to fight alongside a large number of Arab and North African jihadists in Syria, where he died.
Other reports followed for a while, such as that of Anas el Abboubi, who was born in Morocco in 1992 and moved to Italy in 1999. His actions can be traced on the Sharia4Belgium network: where he decided to establish Sharia4Italy and then leave to Syria, as he wrote in his Facebook profile, to join al-Qaeda and die as a martyr. Luckily, before going, he was charged with terrorism and arrested, because he was accused of plotting terrorist acts in Italy. He was released later and disappeared out of the radar near Syria in January 2014. Reports say that he got there there with the help of an Albanian network. Another related case is that of Mohamed Jarmoune, specialist believe that can give an escape to young people searching for their lost identity.
