This book explores how ordinary Arab-speaking social media users have reacted to propaganda from the Islamic State, rather than how IS propaganda has targeted ordinary users, thus providing a change in perspective in the literature. The authors provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the Arabic discourse on IS, encompassing all phases of the Caliphate’s political evolution, from the apogee of the Islamic State in October 2014 to the loss of its unofficial capital of Raqqa in September 2017. Taking into account key events, the book also considers the most recurrent topics for IS and its opponents who engage in the Twitter conversation. The analysis is based on around 29 million tweets written in the Arabic language, representing a random sample of around one-third of all Arabic tweets referring to IS over the 2014-2017 timeframe.

Tunisia became one of the largest sources of foreign fighters for the Islamic State—even though the country stands out as a democratic bright spot of the Arab uprisings and despite the fact that it had very little history of terrorist violence within its borders prior to 2011. In Your Sons Are at Your Service, Aaron Y. Zelin uncovers the longer history of Tunisian involvement in the jihadi movement and offers an in-depth examination of the reasons why so many Tunisians became drawn to jihadism following the 2011 revolution. Zelin highlights the longer-term causes that affected jihadi recruitment in Tunisia, including the prior history of Tunisians joining jihadi organizations and playing key roles in far-flung parts of the world over the past four decades. He contends that the jihadi group Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia was able to take advantage of the universal prisoner amnesty, increased openness, and the lack of governmental policy toward it after the revolution. In turn, this provided space for greater recruitment and subsequent mobilization to fight abroad once the Tunisian government cracked down on the group in 2013. Zelin marshals cutting-edge empirical findings, extensive primary source research, and on-the-ground fieldwork, including a variety of documents in Arabic going as far back as the 1980s and interviews with Ansar al-Sharia members and Tunisian fighters returning from Syria. The first book on the history of the Tunisian jihadi movement, Your Sons Are at Your Service is a meticulously researched account that challenges simplified views of jihadism’s appeal and success.

This study attempts to analyze a major facet of the international struggle against Da’ish: its media war, which the organization wages alongside its efforts to expand and to fight surrounding regional and international powers. The study observes Da’ish’s media phenomena in the context of the integral role of the media in modern international conflicts, with attention to the development of media tools in Jihadist organizations since the seventies. This investigation reveals the remarkable evolution of the terrorist group in its bid to entrench itself as a caliphate state. The study focuses on Da’ish’s media administration structure and its strategy in deploying its various high-grade audiovisual products to attract youth around the globe. The organization has been able to amass numerous volunteers and extensive equipment to serve its media strategy by constructing an organizational structure that combines hierarchal and non-centralized networks.

This book examines how social media has transformed extremist discourse. Drawing on ISIS and their sophisticated use of social media platforms and PR concepts, it explores the ways in which the outfit was able to recruit, mobilise and spread fundamentalist propaganda in regions where it had little physical presence. One of the first studies to draw a link between international diplomacy, the rise of fundamentalism and public relations, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of defence and strategic studies, especially those working on ISIS propaganda, Middle East Studies, media studies, digital humanities, communication studies, public relations and international relations, as well general readers.

This book examines ISIS’ media propaganda machine. The book focuses on case studies that have been largely understudied in relation to ISIS’ media production. Empirically, it offers new insights into how ISIS uses its media production to disseminate its extremist ideology by focusing on video games, educational apps, Dark Web sites, and offline billboards. The book argues that despite all the discussion about how ISIS has disappeared or even died, the terrorist group’s daily activities on the Dark Web show that they are still thriving and disseminating their propaganda in more than 20 different languages, and effectively functioning as an international news organization. Using a mixed-method research approach, the book offers a multilayered understanding of media content and fills a major gap in the literature, especially in relation to the use of educational apps and the Dark Web. This book will be of much interest to students of media and communication studies, terrorism and counterterrorism, Middle Eastern politics, and international relations.