Batch of US initiatives seeking to undermine Isis’s sophisticated online image is unlikely to work on internet-affluent youths

Former US public diplomacy officials fear the sophisticated, social media borne propaganda of the Islamic State militant group (Isis) is outmatching American efforts at countering it.

Aimed less at Isis itself than at potential supporters, a bevy of US diplomatic and communications initiatives seek to undermine Isis’s portrayal of itself as an authentic, successful Islamic resistance. But even some who helped push the State Department into confronting extremists online fear that US counter-propaganda is amorphous, slipshod and unlikely to persuade internet-fluent youths to whom Isis attempts to appeal.

“I honestly don’t think the government should be in the position of directly engaging jihadis on Twitter. It’s a silly game,” said Shahed Amanullah, who last year left the State Department after helping establish programs to promote anti-extremist Muslim voices abroad.

Isis propaganda runs the gamut from the gruesome video-recorded beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff to Instagram photographs of cats with AK-47s, indicating a comfort Isis has with internet culture. A common theme, shown in euphoric images uploaded to YouTube of jihadi fighters parading in armored US-made vehicles captured from the Iraqi military, is Isis’s potency and success.

Isis videos are shot in high definition and have a cinematic quality. They stitch together battlefield scenes with imagery of Islamic life in the territory the group has conquered, serving as the equivalent of a tourist attraction for what it argues is a true Islamic state. They contrast with al-Qaida’s now-familiar videos showing Osama bin Laden or other leaders reading a statement into a camera or hiking in the Pakistani mountains, a difference sharpened by Isis’s occasionally sardonic tone.

In the offline world, the US response occurs in public diplomacy hubs from Dubai to Washington, where the State Department sends out Arabic-speaking mouthpieces to amplify the latest denunciation of Isis from Barack Obama or secretary of state John Kerry. Much of it focuses on news media outlets like al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. Similar efforts occur across Europe, according to a State Department official, to dissuade the continent’s Muslim youth from joining Isis and other jihadist groups in Syria. The White House also emails reporters reams of anti-Isis quotes by Muslim clerics.

The US administration also points to State Department programs in Muslim countries beyond the Middle East to aid youth, community activists and religious figures in organizing and non-violent activism, something Amanullah helped establish in 2012. Program architects argue that empowerment efforts will eventually reap the benefit of authentic Muslim refutations of extremist groups, either through deed or by word, without the taint of the US government’s involvement.

Online, the most visible US attempt to counter to Isis comes from a social media campaign called Think Again Turn Away, run by a State Department office called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.

As its name indicates, Think Again Turn Away aims less at Isis itself than at its potential recruits. On YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, US diplomats have begun actively trolling Isis, arguing with pro-Isis accounts and producing videos portraying Isis-conquered territory as a hellscape.

Yet Think Again Turn Away has been met with much criticism and even outright mockery. Public diplomacy veterans question its direct engagement with Isis and its choice of topics. A video released on Friday, for instance, criticized Isis’s threadbare curriculum for Iraqi schools. The head of an institute tracking online jihadist messages called Think Again Turn Away’s Twitter campaign “ridiculous” for engaging Isis supporters and inviting ridicule of US policy.

“When these people go online, they needed to be treated like trolls,” Amanullah said, “and we keep feeding the trolls.”

US officials balk at suggestions that Think Again Turn Away is central to its counter-propaganda efforts, even as it stands as the most concerted and tangible program to refute Isis and other extremist groups.

Will McCants, a former State Department adviser who helped establish the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, conceded that it is “impossible for State to know if it’s succeeded or failed at its task”. But McCants argued that the program has potential to “get inside the leadership’s attack calculus”, dissuading Isis from targeting Muslim civilians lest it face increasing criticism.

“This stuff is hard to prove, but there is anecdotal evidence of some jihadi groups complaining about the ‘lies’ spread by State,” McCants said.

Amanullah said the initiative was inadvertently creating a dialogue of equals between the US and Isis, distracting from Muslim criticisms of Isis that carry more credibility within the Muslim world.

The “tragedy of the US government’s attempts to engage online”, Amanullah said, is that “there’s nothing these people like more than to see the US government specifically acknowledging and interacting with them online. They turn right around to their followers and say, ‘See? We’re every bit as powerful as we say we are, the US government is proof.’”