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From efficient instructions on how to kill civilians to horrifying videos of beheadings, no terrorist organization has more comprehensively weaponized social media than ISIS. Its strategic, multiplatformed campaign is so effective that it has ensured global news coverage and inspired hundreds of young people around the world to abandon their lives and their countries to join a foreign war. The Media World of ISIS explores the characteristics, mission, and tactics of the organization's use of media and propaganda. Contributors consider how ISIS's media strategies imitate activist tactics, legitimize its self-declared caliphate, and exploit narratives of suffering and imprisonment as propaganda to inspire followers. Using a variety of methods, contributors explore the appeal of ISIS to Westerners, the worldview made apparent in its doctrine, and suggestions for counteracting the organization's approaches. Its highly developed, targeted, and effective media campaign has helped make ISIS one of the most recognized terrorism networks in the world. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of its strategies--what worked and why--will help combat the new realities of terrorism in the 21st century.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Michael Krona and Rosemary Pennington
Part I: Media & ISIS's Imaginary Geography
1. The Myth of the Caliph: Suffering and Redemption in the Rhetoric of ISIS / Jason A. Edwards
2. Time, Space, and Communication: A Preliminary Comparison of Islamic State to the Mongol Hordes and the Khmer Rouge / Marwan M. Kraidy and John Vilanova
3. The Islamic State's Passport Paradox / William Lafi Youmans
4. Picturing Statehood During ISIS's Caliphal Days / Karim El Damanhoury
Part II: Mediating Terror
5. ISIS's Media Ecology and Participatory Activism Tactics
/ Michael Krona
6. Video Verite in the Age of ISIS / Kathleen German
7. Brand of Brothers: Marketing the Islamic State / Brian Hughes
8. It's More than Orange: ISIS's Appropriation of Orange Prison Jumpsuits as Rhetorical Resistance / Patrick G. Richey and Michaela Edwards
Part III: Narratives of the Islamic State
9. Western Millennials Explain Why They Joined the Islamic State / Matt Pascarella
10. Monstrous Performance: Mohammed Emwazi's Transformation
/ Arthi Chandrasekaran and Nicholas Prephan
11. Transactional Constitution: ISIS's Cooptation of Western Discourse / Jacqueline Bruscella, and Ryan Bisel
12. Terror Remixed: The Islamic State and the Stop the Christian Genocide Campaign / Rosemary Pennington
Epilogue: Rosemary Pennington and Michael Krona
Index
About the author
edited by Rosemary Pennington, Michael Krona
Summary
From efficient instructions on how to kill civilians to horrifying videos of beheadings, no terrorist organization has more comprehensively weaponized social media than ISIS. The Media World of ISIS explores the characteristics, mission, and tactics of the organization's use of media and propaganda.
