Fatal attraction: explaining variation in the attractiveness of Islamic State propaganda

Abstract

Why do different Islamic State propaganda products receive different numbers of views? This article relies on a dataset of 1700 Islamic State photo essays to examine this question. It finds that violence in Islamic State photo essays, especially retributional violence, or violence directed at the group’s enemies and wayward adherents, leads to increased viewership. Releases that highlight the group’s military operations, governance activities and geographic expansion also draw more attention, although less than the increase for products containing retributional violence. These findings have implications for research and counterterrorism efforts targeted at reducing the propaganda appeal of terrorist organizations.

Keywords

Islamic State propaganda terrorism violence

Introduction¹

In August 2014, a propaganda video released by the group known as the Islamic State surfaced online and showed the gruesome beheading of an American journalist, causing revulsion worldwide and increased counterterrorism pressure against the group.² This video, as brutal as it was, is only one of thousands of propaganda products released by the Islamic State in an effort to increase its followers and instill fear in its enemies. To achieve these goals, the group shows a wide variety of images: fighters carrying out attacks, members distributing food to the poor, workers paving roads in villages and cities, and individuals going about their daily lives in territory controlled by the group.

Of course, the Islamic State is not the first terrorist organization to create and disseminate propaganda to achieve its goals. Terrorists have a long history of producing propaganda. For example, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) created a webpage designed exclusively to highlight the contributions of female members, Hezbollah previously launched the Al-Manar television station complete with programming geared for children and talk shows, Stormfront (a white supremacist organization) pioneered the use of the online bulletin board, and the Animal Liberation Front released clandestinely-filmed videos of experimentation on animals. Terrorists’ reasons for using propaganda can be summed up by Al-Qa’ida’s then deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who asked subordinates to remember that, “we are in a battle, and that more than half this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media” (al-Zawahiri, 2005).

However, despite the importance of propaganda in recruiting fighters, mobilizing supporters to action, and communicating fear to enemy audiences, we still know comparatively little about which products attract the greatest number of views and why some types of propaganda seem to gain more traction than others. This lacuna in the literature on terrorism and political violence is in large part due to the difficulty of quantitatively assessing the attention paid to terrorist messaging. This article overcomes this challenge by utilizing a new dataset of 1700 Islamic State photo essays and corresponding page views gathered from September to December 2015.³

First, the article explores how the terrorism literature, while discussing the nature and theory of terrorist propaganda, has not engaged in much quantitative assessment of the actual attention given to the propaganda. To facilitate such an assessment, this article examines the literature on persuasion and marketing, which gives rise to a number of hypotheses regarding the connection between individual propaganda products and the number of online page views they receive. The article then utilizes a zero-truncated negative binomial analysis to examine a newly created dataset of the number of page views of 1700 Islamic State photo essays. The results show that the largest increase in attention given to Islamic State photo essays is toward products that contain retributional violence against the group’s enemies. Additionally, releases highlighting the group’s military actions, governance activities, certain cities inside the group’s so-called caliphate, and its expansion across the world also increase the number of views. The article concludes by discussing avenues for future research as well as policy recommendations.

Setting the stage: gaining support and terrorist propaganda

Lake (2002: 19–20) noted that terrorist groups, being numerically inferior to their opponents, need to attract more people to their side to have a chance of securing the group’s ultimate goals. While attracting supporters is a critical task for the terrorist group’s endgame, it is also important for a variety of other reasons long before a successful outcome. Indeed, research has suggested that publicity serves a number of functions for terrorist groups, including raising awareness of the cause, recruitment, injecting fear into enemies, and increasing group cohesion (Bueno de Mesquita and Dickson, 2007; Frey, 1987; Hoffman, 2006; Nacos, 2016; Schmid, 2005).

One way that terrorists gain publicity is through “propaganda of the deed,” or, in other words, by carrying out attacks and operations. It is important to note that, under this particular method of gaining publicity, terrorists rely on the media to spread the message of their attacks and carry their statements to the world. The attainment of publicity by terrorist groups through the media has been a subject of scholarly attention (Kingston, 1995; Schmid, 1989; Wilkinson, 1997). However, terrorist groups, particularly with the increased availability of the internet and social media, do not have to rely solely on others to spread their message. Because of this, there is a substantial body of literature that examines how terrorist groups create and distribute their own propaganda.

This particular body of literature can be divided into three categories: the theory on the use of propaganda by terrorist groups (Schleifer, 2014; Schmid, 2005; Tugwell, 1986; Weimann, 2005), case studies of propaganda campaigns by specific terrorist organizations (Payne, 2009; Schleifer, 2014; Torres et al., 2006; Torres-Soriano, 2010), and the use of new technologies by terrorist groups to convey their messages (Archetti, 2015; Earnhardt, 2014; Rothenberger, 2012; Weimann, 2005). It is important to note that, while the literature has focused on the theory and practice related to terrorist propaganda, there has not been as much analysis on how or why different elements of terrorist propaganda attract viewers.⁴

Despite this gap in the terrorism studies literature, other subfields have explored the attractive nature of communication more broadly. Operating under the well-established premise from these other literature streams that messaging is not consumed equally by all viewers, one can draw specific insights from the literature on marketing, influence, and persuasion. These insights can then be used to craft expectations regarding the attractiveness of terrorist propaganda, specifically that of Islamic State photo essays. Then, the collection of data can assess whether these explanations stand up to empirical scrutiny or not.

Explaining the attractiveness of Islamic State photo essays

The Islamic State reasserted itself on the world stage in 2014, most notably following its takeover of Mosul. The Syrian civil war, Iraqi government missteps, and various other factors contributed to the group’s ability to bounce back from the challenges it faced in Iraq after the Sunni Awakening that began in 2006. When it reemerged, it brought with it a well-developed media organization that it had developed to create and disseminate propaganda (Milton, 2016; Stern and Berger, 2015). This media organization, and the content it produces, has been the subject of several studies that attempt to categorize the group’s propaganda according to its themes and frequency of release (Derrick et al., 2016; Milton, 2016; Shamieh and Szenes, 2015; Winter, 2015; Zelin, 2015). However, only one study has attempted an empirical exploration of the spread of the Islamic State’s propaganda (Marcellino et al., 2017). It accomplished this by examining the words used by the Islamic State in its propaganda as opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and then assessed how far each of the respective lexicons spread. Even including this important work, there is little research regarding why certain propaganda releases receive more attention than others.

Although such an examination is lacking in the terrorism studies literature, issues of persuasion, product design, and presentation are all well-researched topics in the literature on marketing, influence, and advertising.⁵ This literature, seemingly distinct from terrorist propaganda, shares important similarities. After all, terrorist propaganda is a product being peddled to a consumer in an effort to convince them to be afraid, support a cause, engage in violence, or some other action that the group desires. Given this similarity, insights from that literature may be useful in understanding the attractiveness of terrorist products or ideas. Within this literature, two camps emerge about what makes a particular product attractive. The first suggests that something about the product itself makes it likely to attract attention. The second holds that attraction has less to do with the product and more to do with how it is packaged and sold. Considering which factors fall within each of these camps and articulating how they apply to Islamic State propaganda should yield testable implications for the subsequent analysis.

In regard to the product itself, visual and verbal cues that help convey the actual purpose of the product have been shown to be helpful in attracting attention. More specifically, marketing research has shown that visual and verbal cues in advertisements can effectively message the product’s purported benefit to the consumer and help the consumer remember the product when it comes time to purchase something (Keller, 1987; Keller et al., 1998). Even though the end goal in these studies is recall and purchase, it stands to reason that the attractiveness of an advertisement is likely correlated with both metrics as well.

Applied to terrorist propaganda, the attractiveness of Islamic State products should be tied to similar thematic, visual, or contextual cues that speak to what the group actually hopes to achieve. In other words, products should be attractive to the extent they speak to the group’s brand. What is the group’s brand? After nearly suffering defeat in Iraq, the Islamic State was able to reorganize itself because of the chaotic Syrian civil war and the political unrest that existed in Iraq (al-’Ubaydi et al., 2014). Both of these events, which were essentially failures in governance on the part of the Syrian and Iraqi governments, created a window in which the Islamic State was able to offer a remedy: the defeat of those who would harm the true believers and a state under which Muslims could live. These goals were made clear by then ISIL spokesman Abu Muhammad al-’Adnani on June 29, 2014, when he announced the establishment of the Islamic State: “Succession, establishment, and safety” (al-’Adnani, 2014)—in other words, the ascendency of the group through its military capability, the establishment of the structures that make up the state, and the continued existence of the group into perpetuity. If these were the goals of the group, then it is likely that individual propaganda releases would receive greater numbers of views to the extent that they touch on these ideas.

When it comes to the group’s presentation of its military ability, it would make sense for it to attract attention if there was a need for such military ability. Both the tragic conditions of the Syrian civil war and the oppression of Sunni Muslims in Iraq created an appetite for this aspect of the group’s appeal. Since the inception of the Syrian civil war in late 2011, the war has been estimated to have cost the lives hundreds of thousands of civilians, some of whom have been gassed, tortured, or otherwise mistreated by the government.⁶ In Iraq, long-standing tensions between Sunnis and the government led to an outbreak of protests and then violence. For some, the failure of outside powers to intervene on their behalf in the early stages of these conflicts meant that a solution had to come from elsewhere. The Islamic State, with its slick propaganda conveying its alleged military acumen, was there to fill the need. It saw itself as an armed force capable of protecting Muslims and punishing the group’s enemies. The leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said the following in an appearance in the summer of 2014:

So by Allah, we will take revenge! By Allah, we will take revenge! Even if it takes a while, we will take revenge, and every amount of harm against the ummah will be responded to with multitudes more against the perpetrator. (al-Baghdadi, 2014)

Given that there was a perceived need in 2012–2013 for a group that could stand militarily against other forces in the region, and that the Islamic State clearly saw itself in that role, a reasonable expectation would be that photo essays highlighting this aspect of the group would be more attractive.

Hypothesis 1: Photo essays that feature military activities of the Islamic State should receive a greater number of views than other photo essays.

However, as noted above, the very name of the Islamic State suggests aspirations beyond violence that stretch into the realm of statehood. That a militant organization would provide governance services in an effort to replace the existing state is not new. Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers, among others, have utilized social services as a means to gain legitimacy and appeal to their respective constituencies (Flanigan, 2008; Grynkewich, 2008; Mampilly, 2015).

While these examples show that the Islamic State’s governance efforts are not novel, there is still a unique aspect to how the group (1) highlights these efforts in its propaganda and (2) ties them into its ideology. On the first account, highlighting governance efforts helps the group convince people of its ability to fill the role of the state, serves as a critical “story” that helps the group gain foreign followers, and potentially most importantly, placates those living under its rule (Kalyvas, 2015). To achieve this end, the group not only performs governance-related actions as diverse as distributing charitable goods to handling disputes in family court, but it makes the public presentation of its activities an important part of its overall media strategy (Derrick et al., 2016; Milton, 2016).

The second part of how the governance appeal attracts attention is the fact that the demonstration of an ability to govern is tied into a religious narrative about the importance of establishing a just society based on Islamic law. Such a tie-in has the potential to widen the group’s appeal. Indeed, the establishment of a state based on Islamic principles was something that distinguished the Islamic State’s earliest leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, from bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida (al-’Ubaydi et al., 2014). By prioritizing the importance of governance in the here and now based on Islamic principles in the group’s messaging, the Islamic State provides a solution to the various political problems facing what it defines as its in-group, Sunni Muslims (Ingram, 2016). In other words, its governance messaging reinforces the group’s identity. It also allows the group to create something of a social contract, laying out expectations for both the government and the governed (March and Revkin, 2015). This fusion of governance ability, religious ideology, and the identity of the group has the potential to turn individuals into what Atran (2016) refers to as “devoted actors,” individuals willing to go to extreme lengths to contribute to the organization’s goals.

Taken together, the preceding discussion suggests that part of what individuals find attractive about the group’s propaganda is not just its ability to demonstrate military prowess, but also its ability to establish the structures of statehood that the group claims as its ultimate end. If this is the case, then we should expect to see propaganda featuring its governance activities receiving more hits.

Hypothesis 2: Photo essays that feature governance activities of the Islamic State should receive a greater number of views than other photo essays.

The previous discussion examined how photo essays that highlighted the group’s key themes of fighting and governance would lead to increased views of the piece that reflected those themes. The literature on marketing has also suggested that the placement of a product matters (Gupta and Lord, 1998; Karniouchina et al., 2011; Sigurdsson et al., 2009). This suggests a connection between locations, broadly defined, and product attractiveness. For example, research has shown that the presentation of capital cities can be an important factor in attracting tourism, particularly because of the fact that these cities are symbols of what a country stands for (Hall, 2002; Huang and Lee, 2009; Smith, 2007). Another reason that some scholars have posited for the attractive value of capital cities is that they play an important role in conveying political power, both domestically and internationally. This is because of how these cities are built, the fact that they host critical government ministries and offices, and the very symbolic nature of having a capital city (Minkenberg, 2014; Schatz, 2003). In short, capital or important cities serve as attractive symbols of power, money, order, and structure.

The portrayal of important cities, then, may be one way a group can enhance the attractive nature of its propaganda. In the case of the Islamic State, the group’s military advances in 2014 allowed it to gain control over broad swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. Despite the large number of villages, cities, and towns under the group’s control, certain cities within the group’s territory appear to be more important than others. These two cities are Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq. There are two principal reasons that featuring these two cities might affect the number of views products featuring these cities are likely to receive. First, the maintenance of cities of strategic, historic, and symbolic value likely serves as a morale booster to those already aligned with the group. For example, it was in a mosque in Mosul that the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, elected to make his first public appearance after the declaration of the caliphate. Some saw this as an important nod to the historical significance of the both the mosque in which he appeared and the city itself (al-’Ubaydi et al., 2014: 11–12). Second, the mere fact that these cities have a large number of inhabitants in the Islamic State’s territory makes them a very powerful test case for the group’s ability to govern effectively.⁷ Raqqa was one of the first major cities captured by the anti-Assad opposition, so it stands as a symbol of the resistance to Assad as well as offering a view into the group’s future (al-Tamimi, 2015; Stern and Berger, 2015). In short, these two cities are key symbols of the caliphate and are likely of special interest to those viewing their propaganda.

Hypothesis 3: Photo essays that feature Raqqa or Mosul should receive a greater number of views than other photo essays.

Beyond the caliphate’s capitals, one of the key components of the Islamic State’s narrative was that it was “remaining and expanding” (Law, 2015). This narrative was particularly salient after the June 2014 caliphate declaration and subsequent pledges of allegiance from jihadi groups from around the world. Part of presenting this narrative in a convincing fashion was the group’s ability to show that it had a presence outside of Iraq and Syria. Consequently, its propaganda activities were geared toward furthering this perception, believing that such a demonstration has multiple benefits. For those already aligned with the group, media products that highlight expansion serve as a reminder that they belong to an organization that is moving forward, not stagnant or shrinking. And, for those who may be on the fence about joining or supporting the group, these products offer a sense of inevitability regarding the group’s eventual dominance. In short, releases highlighting the appeal of the group beyond its core territorial holdings in Iraq and Syria should serve to increase interest and attract views.

Hypothesis 4: Photo essays that feature territory outside of Iraq and Syria should receive a greater number of views than other photo essays.

Another consideration is the way or manner in which the product is presented to the audience, especially as it relates to the emotive nature of the images being shown. The literature in both politics and commerce is replete with studies examining the role of emotional appeals (Brader, 2005, 2006; Geuens et al., 2011). More specific to the subject at hand, the conventional wisdom is that violence has the potential to have a very powerful attractive factor. This has been shown by studies analyzing the economic earnings of violent films (Ravid and Basuroy, 2004). An important caveat is that the effect of violence on a variety of cognitive and behavioral indicators from memory to viewership to action is not consistently significant (Anderson et al., 2003; Diener and DeFour, 1978; Jansz, 2005; Lull and Bushman, 2015; Mustonen, 1997; Sparks et al., 2005). Nevertheless, the use of violence to draw out emotions and attract attention, even if it does not ultimately affect behavior, is a well-established finding.

Applying this to the case of the Islamic State is not as straightforward as one might think. This is because the Islamic State’s propaganda is filled with many different depictions of violence. One is just as likely to see images of the aftermath of coalition airstrikes as a raid carried out by Islamic State fighters. The argument made in this article is that, given the group’s claim to be a protector of Muslims and a defender of its own interpretation of Islam, violence designed to evoke emotions toward the idea that it can defeat enemies and punish non-believers should attract the largest number of views. I refer to this as retributional violence.

The question here is, why would the Islamic State expect depictions of retributional violence to attract eyes to its products? The literature on radicalization and political violence provides a partial answer. As noted in several studies of radicalization, for an individual to decide to engage in violence there needs to be, at some point, a connection between how the individual feels and what the group enables them to do about that feeling (Horgan, 2008; Moghaddam, 2005; Sageman, 2008). By creating propaganda that graphically depicts its ability to inflict violence on perceived enemies, the Islamic State makes that connection very clear. Indeed, it shows that revenge is not just a theoretical concept, but one that the group intends to put into practice on behalf of the in-group it defines as its core constituency. As Crenshaw (1981: 394) pointed out, “If there is a single common emotion that drives the individual to become a terrorist, it is vengeance on behalf of [others].” In short, the use of retributional violence in propaganda is not just violence for the sake of committing violence, but violence designed to communicate a very clear message to the audience (Nanninga, 2017).

The use of retributional violence in propaganda is not unique to the Islamic State. In the case of al-Qa’ida, scholars note that the group used violence in media products in an effort to appeal to a wider audience (Furnish, 2005). However, the ability to attract attention through depictions of violence against the group’s enemies is something at which the Islamic State excels. Indeed, the group values not only portraying its military capability and prowess on the battlefield (which was captured in Hypothesis 1), but also the brutality that is it capable of bringing to bear against the group’s enemies. Examples in the Islamic State’s propaganda abound, as the group has demonstrated retributional violence in a variety of forms: beheadings, shootings, crucifixion, drowning, explosives, and other violent methods. It continually searches for ways to “improve” its presentation of such violence, including by placing cameras in various locations in an effort to portray the most graphic angles possible and by using children to carry out the executions. This has led some scholars to refer to the ability to portray violence as a key reason for the group’s appeal (McCoy, 2014). If it is a key portion of the group’s platform, then the Islamic State’s graphic presentation of retributional violence should be anticipated to increase the number of views that a product containing such violence receives.

Hypothesis 5: Photo essays that contain depictions of retributional violence conducted by the group should receive a greater number of views than other photo essays.

The final hypothesis presented here has to do with another important facet of how propaganda is presented: the messenger. Word-of-mouth advertising, transmission from one person who has tried a product to someone who has yet to try it, has been found to be markedly more effective than other forms of advertising at attracting new customers (Trusov et al., 2009: 98). Although such direct contact is different in the social media space, visual propaganda products might still draw attention depending on who is featured as conveying the message. To be clear, this is not simply about finding the most recognized face. Research has shown that getting a message out effectively is not just a matter of finding the most popular intermediaries, but in some cases finding the right intermediaries (Katona et al., 2011: 432–434; Liu-Thompkins, 2012: 475). In other words, individuals to whom the audience can relate may be just as important as individuals easily recognized by the audience.

One of the Islamic State’s media strategies relies on the use of various individuals to convey the group’s messages. Whereas al-Qa’ida propaganda featured leadership-level figures (i.e. easily recognizable faces), Islamic State propaganda has been filled with presenters both young and old, educated and uneducated, new to the organization and veterans of jihadi conflicts. One of the most salient differences in terms of the messenger is that not only does the Islamic State feature individuals from Iraq and Syria in their propaganda products, but the group seems to place great emphasis on presenting individuals from Africa, Europe, and North America. This use of individuals from different nationalities serves as a potential magnet to viewers around the world, as well as an attempt by the group to suggest the broad appeal of the movement. If using different faces to convey the message matters, then photo essays that feature individuals other than locals (Iraqis or Syrians) should have higher hit counts.

Hypothesis 6: Photo essays that feature foreign members of the group should receive a greater number of views than other photo essays.

Research design

To test these ideas, the author collected a dataset of official Islamic State photo essays together with an accompanying metric of how frequently each had been viewed. It is worth noting that there is a distinction between official and unofficial Islamic State media products. Official products are produced by the central media arms of the Islamic State (such as the well-known Al-Hayat or Al-Furqan media entities) or by one of the group’s many regional media bureaus. Unofficial products are pictures, videos, or other items produced by Islamic State supporters or sympathizers without the approval or blessing of the central media arms. The line between official and unofficial, however, can be blurry, as in the case of A’maq News Agency, which promotes itself as “unofficial” but has been shown to have much tighter ties to central Islamic State media figures. The photo essays used in this article come from the group’s official provincial media bureaus.⁸

The unit of observation is the individual photo essay. The temporal range of the data goes from September to December 2015 and includes all official Islamic State photo essays. During this time, the Islamic State posted approximately 1738 photo essays. Limitations in the coding for some of the variables drops the number of photo essays used in the analysis to 1702.

The dependent variable in this study is a recording of the hit counter on each of the individual JustPaste.it pages where individual products are located. To be clear, page views are not the only way of operationalizing the concept of “attraction,” but there are at least two advantages to using page views as the dependent variable. First, page views are a simple, but clear, measure of active engagement with a product. The requirement that a user do something to access the content, in this case, click on a link, tracks closely with the concept of “attraction,” as opposed to simple exposure to a product. Second, because page views are an anonymous and non-intrusive measure, user behavior is unlikely to be affected by fear of government detection or social desirability bias. More active measures of attraction, either face-to-face interviews or overt engagement on social media platforms, may suffer measurement error because of these factors.

When a product is uploaded to JustPaste.it, each page has its own hit counter that tracks the number of non-unique visits to the page.⁹ This data was collected by visiting each of the pages and recording the number of hits that the product received. Despite the fact that the same organization creates and distributes each of the photo essays, there is a wide amount of variation in the number of hits garnered by each photo essay (see Figure 1). The essay with the fewest number of views was a report released on 10 October 2015, which showed the Islamic State’s attempt to issue identification cards to needy individuals. This product received 81 views. The release with the greatest number of views was released by the Islamic State’s Sinai media bureau on 11 September 2015. This product depicted an attack by Islamic State forces on the Egyptian Army and items captured following the battle. It received 30,125 views. The mean number of views for all photo essays in the dataset was 2321.

Figure 1.

Distribution of page views of Islamic State photo essays.

Although the limitations and alternatives to using page views are discussed more fully in the Online Appendix, one limitation bears mention here as it speaks directly to the aims and applicability of this research. Unfortunately, this data does not speak to the key questions of radicalization and mobilization. The number of views a product receives does not tell us who is likely to take action based on what they have seen, or why. It does not tell us which products impacted younger as opposed to older individuals. However, despite this limitation, this research does take one step toward answering those questions by providing a view of which products, in general, are more attractive than others, as well as potential explanations for those results. It is, in other words, a first cut at the important questions related to propaganda and participation in violence.

The first two independent variables capture the idea that certain product themes should attract more views. For each of these variables, researchers coded propaganda releases according to different themes.¹⁰ To test Hypothesis 1, the binary variable Military was coded “1” if the photo essay contained images related to the Islamic State’s war efforts, including images of Islamic State fighters in combat, the destruction of enemy targets, and the acquisition of “war spoils” by the group’s fighters. It was coded as “0” otherwise. Governance, the binary variable related to Hypothesis 2, was coded “1” if the photo essay contained images related to the group’s efforts to provide security and social services to individuals living within the territory controlled by the group, and “0” otherwise. This category includes images of the distribution of food and money, punishments of people accused of breaking the law, and public works projects such as the paving of roads and the building of bridges.

Hypothesis 3, which posited that featuring the Islamic State’s capital cities would attract more views, is represented by the variable Capital City. This variable is binary, with a value of “1” if the essay highlights Raqqa, Syria, or Mosul, Iraq. To code this variable, the captions of the photo essays were examined to see whether one of these two cities was the subject of the release. The variable Outside Bureau tests Hypothesis 4 by capturing whether a propaganda product was tagged as having come from one of the Islamic State’s media bureaus in an area outside of Iraq and Syria, such as from the group’s media bureaus in Afghanistan, Yemen, the Sinai Peninsula, or Libya.¹¹ If the products came from one of these locations, then this variable is equal to “1.” If the product emerged from within Iraq or Syria, it is equal to “0.”

Hypothesis 5 suggests that the depiction of retributional violence, distinct from general portrayals of military activities, should increase the number of views of Islamic State photo essays. The coding of retributional violence was done in two ways. First, the various depictions of violence in Islamic State photo essays were coded depending on type. The variable Dead Enemy is a binary variable equal to “1” if the picture report features images of dead fighters that are enemies of the Islamic State. Execution is a binary variable that equals “1” if the release contains images of an execution, “0” if it does not. Dead Islamic State Fighter is a binary variable that is equal to “1” if the report shows dead Islamic State fighters, but is equal to “0” otherwise. Finally, Civilian Casualties is a binary variable that is equal to “1” if the product contains images of non-combatants that the Islamic State purports were killed or wounded in airstrikes, shelling, or some other “enemy” activity. This last variable is particularly important, as it accounts for the possibility that the violence that attracts people to Islamic State propaganda, and potentially to its cause, is violence highlighting atrocities carried out against civilians by forces other than the Islamic State.¹²

The second way involved combining these sub-categories into two broader variables. Retributional Violence, the main test of Hypothesis 5, was assigned a value of “1” if the actual depiction of violence was against the group’s enemies, either on the battlefield or in the cities governed by the group. Thus, acts captured under the Execution and Dead Enemy variables were included here. The second of these two more general variables, Other Violence, was coded as a “1” if the type of violence demonstrated did not have to do with the group’s ability to punish enemies. This included actions captured under the variables Dead Islamic State Fighter and Civilian Casualties.

The last key independent variable accounts for the nationality of the individual(s) featured in the photo essays. The variable Non-Local is a binary measure that is equal to “1” if at least one person who is not from Iraq or Syria appears in the release, and “0” otherwise. Hypothesis 6 argued that if the individual(s) featured were not from Iraq or Syria, a greater number of hits should result.

The analysis includes several control variables. Three are controls related to themes other than military or governance that appeared in the group’s propaganda. Photo essays which feature the group’s adherence to the preaching of Islam and reading of the Koran might attract views. The binary variable Religious captures the group’s attempts to portray religious life in their territory by showing things such as mosques, sermons, Friday prayers, and Koran recitation competitions. Propaganda pieces that represent the group’s efforts to show the thriving commercial sector in the towns they control are captured in the binary variable Commercial. Images of various shops, vendors, and marketplaces are typical in this category. The final category, Other, captures releases that were typical of what you might see on the evening news of a local news program: images of snowfall in cities, interviews with locals about living conditions, and the aftermath of “enemy” airstrikes and shelling (not including images of causalities).¹³ Another control accounts for the possibility that certain photo essays receive more views simply because they contain more images. The variable Number of Images is a count of the number of images in each photo essay. It ranges from 1 to 59 with a mean of slightly more than 7 images per essay. Finally, although most readings of the hit counter took place within days after its posting, a small number took place after that point. Days Elapsed is a count variable for the number of days between the posting of the product and the recording of the view counter.

Given that this is count data, use of ordinary least squares is inappropriate. Because of overdispersion in the data (confirmed by post-estimation tests), the negative binomial is preferred to the Poisson for estimating the data. The fact that the count data is left-truncated (i.e. does not start at zero) requires the use of something other than the regular negative binomial regression model. Consequently, the zero-truncated negative binomial, which was designed for cases such as that presented by this data, was used for the analysis, with robust standard errors clustered on the media bureau releasing the photo essay. The summary statistics for the variables can be seen in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1.

Summary statistics

Variable	Mean	Standard deviation	Minimum	Maximum
Page Views	2328.5	2138.94	81	30,125
Number of Images	7.35	6.42	1	59
Days Elapsed	1.5	1.2	0	27

Table 2.

Summary statistics (binary variables)

Binary variables	Number of 1s	Binary variables	Number of 1s
Non-local	3%	Military Theme	40%
Retributional Violence	6%	Governance Theme	22%
Other Violence	4%	Religious Theme	8%
Dead Enemy	3%	Commercial Theme	13%
Execution	3%	Capital City	6%
Civilian Casualties	4%	Outside Bureau	9%
Dead Islamic State Fighter	<1%

Empirical analysis

This article now turns to the empirical analysis of the number of views of 1702 Islamic State photo essays. As a reminder, the dependent variable is the number of hits that each propaganda product received on an anonymous file-sharing website. The results of the zero-truncated negative binomial analysis appear in Table 3. There are three models presented in Table 3, with the difference between them being the way in which Hypothesis 5, which deals with retributional violence, is tested.

Table 3.

Zero-truncated negative binomial regression analysis of hits of Islamic State propaganda

Regressor	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Military Theme	0.48***	0.35***	0.35***
	(0.08)	(0.07)	(0.07)
Governance Theme	0.29***	0.16**	0.13**
	(0.06)	(0.06)	(0.06)
Capital City	0.21***	0.24***	0.25***
	(0.07)	(0.06)	(0.06)
Outside Bureau	0.29**	0.27**	0.28**
	(0.12)	(0.12)	(0.12)
Violence (Any Type)	0.41***	—	—
	(0.07)	—	—
Retributional Violence	—	0.67***	—
	—	(0.07)	—
Other Violence	—	−0.24**	—
	—	(0.10)	—
Dead Enemy	—	—	0.43***
	—	—	(0.10)
Execution	—	—	0.83***
	—	—	(0.07)
Dead Islamic State Fighter	—	—	−0.04
	—	—	(0.27)
Civilian Casualties	—	—	−0.27**
	—	—	(0.11)
Non-local Fighter Featured	0.08	0.11	0.10
	(0.10)	(0.10)	(0.10)
Religious Theme	0.06**	−0.04	−0.05
	(0.03)	(0.04)	(0.04)
Commercial Theme	0.06	−0.05	−0.05
	(0.06)	(0.06)	(0.06)
Number of Images	0.06***	0.06***	0.06***
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Days Elapsed	0.05**	0.06**	0.06**
	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)
Constant	6.78***	6.87***	6.87***
	(0.08)	(0.08)	(0.08)
Alpha	0.27***	0.26***	0.26***
	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Observations	1702	1702	1702

p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01 (two-tailed).

The results in Models 1–3 provide support to Hypothesis 1, as photo essays that have a military angle see a statistically significant increase in views across all three models. Using the incident rate ratio, the substantive effect is that a military themed essay receives an expected hit count increase of about 42%.¹⁴ Hypothesis 2 is also supported, as governance-themed essays also experience an increase in the number of page views. However, despite the fact that both governance and military releases are statistically significant, the magnitude of the impact is much smaller for photo essays that focus on governance, with an expected hit increase of only 14%. This suggests that, although a sizable portion of attention is given to the Islamic State’s military activities, a smaller, but still significant, market exists in which consumers are interested in the group’s portrayal of its ability to provide governance.

The results also support Hypothesis 3, which argued that hit counts would increase if the photo essays contained images of Mosul and Raqqa. If one of those two cities appeared in the release, the expected number of hits increased by 28%. The other aspect of geographic appeal, related to the growth of the caliphate, also seems to hold. Indeed, an increase of almost 33% accrues to a photo essay if it comes from a media bureau that is outside of Iraq and Syria (Hypothesis 4). As mentioned above, the Islamic State’s narrative during this period of time was that the group was “remaining and expanding.” Such a narrative appears to have resonated with the consumers of the group’s propaganda.

Hypothesis 5 argued that retributional violence in photo essays would be a key factor in attracting attention. Without distinguishing between retributional violence and other types of violence, as was done in Model 1, it appears that all types of violence have a positive and statistically significant impact on the number of views. However, if violence in the group’s products is divided into retributional acts and other depictions of violence, the results change dramatically. Hypothesis 5, which argued that retributional violence would lead to an increase in page views, receives significant support. Indeed, products with retributional violence in them see an average 94% increase in hit counts. What is interesting is that products depicting the end result of violence against the group itself (in the form of dead Islamic State fighters) or those that it alleges to defend (civilians) see statistically significant decreases in hit counts of about 22%.

While these findings provide support for Hypothesis 5, breaking this result down further, as is done in Model 3, reveals more nuance. If a product contains images of an execution, the expected number of hits increases by 129%. If the product contains images of dead Islamic State enemies, the expected increase is 54%. In other words, the effect of retributional violence seems to be driven by images of executions, although the effect of featuring dead enemies of the group is sizable. There is still more nuance when it comes to other types of violence. There was a statistically significant 24% reduction in the expected number of hits if civilian casualties were shown in the image. This is surprising, as many have considered the death of civilians to be one of the primary motivating factors for individuals wanting to travel to Iraq and Syria to fight. This finding does not necessarily overturn that explanation, but it does suggest that what individuals find most attractive about the Islamic State’s propaganda is not its broadcasting of civilian deaths. Finally, photo essays containing images of dead Islamic State fighters do not have a statistically significant impact.

In other words, violence sells, but only certain types of violence. According to the results here, images of violence against civilians meant fewer eyes on a product. There was no statistically discernible effect for images of dead Islamic State fighters. The type of violence that attracted viewers was retributional violence, which is specifically designed to show the group’s ability to punish its enemies on the battlefield and carry out punishments for violations of the group’s interpretation of Islamic law in the locations it controlled. Photo essays with these types of images attracted the most attention, a finding that has important implications for counter-messaging, which will be discussed in the conclusion. The analysis did not support Hypothesis 6, as the presence of a non-Iraqi or Syrian in the photo essay did not have a statistically significant impact on the number of views received.

For the control variables, it was surprising to see that religiously and commercially themed releases did not have a discernable impact on views. Products that contained more photos also received a higher number of views. It is important to remember that the 6% increase in the expected number of views is only for one picture. In the case of a product of that contains seven images (the mean number in the dataset), the expected percentage increase in the number of hits is 52%. As expected, when the time between the posting of the product and the reading of the hit counter lengthened, the number of hits was higher.

Several additional models assessed the robustness of these findings.¹⁵ First, all photo essays that are outliers in terms of the number of views they received were dropped. For purposes of this check, outliers were designated as those products that had more than 10,000 views. Only 18 products (approximately 1% of the dataset) fit this criteria. Dropping them resulted in no changes to the results presented above. Second, the possibility exists that the operational environment in which these releases are being conducted is driving the findings. September 2015 marked the beginning of French airstrikes against the Islamic State (Chrisafis, 2015). October saw renewed efforts in Iraq by US and Iraqi forces (Gordon and Schmitt, 2015). November saw the liberation of Sinjar. By December, over 14% of the group’s territory had been lost (Pecanha and Watkins, 2015). To account for this trend in increased counter-Islamic State activity, dummy variables were added for each month to account for the possibility that there were monthly variations in the number of hits, with the reference category indicating that an essay had been released in September 2015.¹⁶ Relative to the number of hits in September 2015, each the coefficient for each subsequent month was negative, indicating that, on average, the number of hits per product declined in October, November, and December. However, this finding was only statistically significant in the case of the months of November and December. The magnitude of the effect suggested that the expected number of views decreased in November and December by 10% and 11.7%, respectively. The results relating to the other independent variables remained largely unchanged with one exception: the expected number of page views for religiously themed photo essays declined by 7.7%. This result was just outside the bounds of conventional statistical significance at the 95% confidence level (p-value = 0.067).

Third, there may be some concern regarding the inclusion of products for which the page count was not recorded shortly following the product being posted. As described above, while efforts were made to collect and tabulate the page views as quickly as possible, in some cases the number of page views was not recorded until later. Specifically, page views were recorded within 4 days after posting in 99% of all the cases. If the 1% of cases in which the count was not recorded within 4 days are dropped and the analysis run again, there are no changes to the results presented in Table 3 above. Even if we only include releases where page views were captured within 3 days (96% of all releases), there is only one minor change. In the analysis, photo essays with a religious theme become statistically significant at the 90% confidence level (p = 0.076) and have a negative impact on the number of views. Neither of these changes greatly alters the overall conclusions as discussed above.

In sum, the robustness tests serve to increase confidence that the results presented above capture meaningful factors within Islamic State photo essays that help explain why certain products receive more views than others. The essays that contain retributional violence, speak to the group’s military and governance efforts, and capture the unique nature of the caliphate’s capital cities and geographic expansion have increased number of page views as compared with essays that do not featured one of those attributes. On the other hand, featuring civilian casualties seems to reduce the number of views received. Products featuring fighters from outside of Iraq and Syria, as well as products with overt religious or commercial themes, do not seem to receive an increased amount of attention.

Conclusion

Asymmetric warfare in the twenty-first century centers not only on the military hardware possessed by each side, but also by each side’s ability to effectively compete in the war of ideas. Despite this truth, research on the attractive power of terrorist propaganda has been limited. This article provides a first-cut remedy for this gap in the literature. It does this through an examination of different factors in official Islamic State photo essays together with a dataset on hit counts for each essay. The identification of these factors was informed by the literature on marketing, terrorism studies, and political communication. The results suggest that products featuring retributional violence, that is violence directed against the Islamic State’s enemies, have a very high attractive value. What is more, products that underscore the Islamic State’s military and governance ability, control over key cities, and the global nature of the caliphate also have attractive power, albeit more limited.

This research has several policy implications. First, it suggests that care be taken when crafting counter-messaging campaigns. For example, the brutality of the regime may seem to outsiders to be a turn-off. However, given that retributional violence seems to be one of the most attractive features of the Islamic State’s propaganda, the State Department’s “Think Again Turn Away” campaign, especially one video that highlighted acts of violence perpetrated by the Islamic State, seems like a potentially counterproductive choice (Miller and Higham, 2015). Second, if propaganda about ISIS’s capital cities is of great interest, then first-person accounts or declassified information which shows the less pleasant side of governance in these areas may be good candidates for counter-messaging. Government attempts to declassify and use captured information to show the group’s frailties in these areas may prove useful. Third, if the Islamic State’s narrative of “remaining and expanding” attracts attention, then emphasizing the group’s inability to protect its satellite branches or the fractures in those relationships could be productive venues. One need look no further than the struggles of the Islamic State’s Algerian branch in the face of the Algerian government’s counterterrorism offensive and the inability of the group to find a stable and reliable leader in Nigeria as examples along these lines. Fourth, the finding that a wide variety of factors seem to increase views of Islamic State projects suggests that there is no silver bullet in a counter-messaging fight. Just as the Islamic State attracts attention through multiple propaganda pathways, detracting attention will likely require a diversified approach.

Equally interesting are factors that either do not seem to affect the number of times an Islamic State product is viewed or do so in a negative fashion. In the latter case, products highlighting civilian casualties owing to airstrikes saw a decrease in the number of views. In the former case, religiously and commercially themed releases did not have a statistically significant impact on the number of views of Islamic State releases. These findings are surprising, especially given the fact that the group’s religious interpretations and defense of innocents are part of its claim to legitimacy. Whether or not such portrayals remain important to the Islamic State’s identity, these findings suggest that consumers of the group’s propaganda do not seem to care very much about them.

While these findings offer insight into the factors that attract attention to Islamic State propaganda, there are a number of areas that remain fertile ground for future research. For instance, this research has not been able to specifically assess how individuals respond to terrorist propaganda. If someone views propaganda, does it increase their likelihood of supporting or joining the group? Along these same lines, it seems clear that there are also important questions regarding the frequency of exposure and how that affects an individual’s perception of a terrorist group or willingness to act on its behalf. Finally, this study has only looked at the propaganda of one organization: the Islamic State. It would be interesting to see if they results apply similarly to the propaganda put out by al-Qa’ida or any number of its affiliates. Unfortunately, those groups do not post their material to JustPaste.it, so an alternative strategy for collecting information on the popularity of propaganda would be necessary.

The ability of terrorist organizations to leverage social media to amplify their message has introduced new challenges into the counterterrorism fight. No matter how challenging this space is, more research needs to be done to better understand how terrorist groups get their message out, who consumes the terrorist group’s propaganda, and the reason for preferring certain propaganda products over others. This article is hopefully one of the first of many efforts to shed more light on the propaganda practices of terrorist groups that will advance academic understanding and policy insight into this important topic.

Supplemental Material

BJO759008_suplemental_material – Supplemental material for Fatal attraction: explaining variation in the attractiveness of Islamic State propaganda

Supplemental material, BJO759008_suplemental_material for Fatal attraction: explaining variation in the attractiveness of Islamic State propaganda by Daniel Milton in Conflict Management and Peace Science

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author extends sincere thanks to the editors of Conflict Management and Peace Science, as well as the three anonymous reviewers, each of whom provided excellent feedback that made the final product stronger. The author would also like to thank the participants at the John Jay Center on Terrorism’s seminar series for their feedback. Finally, a debt of gratitude is owed to Bryan Price, Brian Dodwell, Seth Loertscher, Muhammad al-’Ubaydi, Nicole Magney, Zack Schenk, Maria Southard, and Dakota Foster for their thoughts and guidance on earlier versions of this article.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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