Playing call of Islamic Duty



The assessment of any digital campaign begins and ends with its target audience, and the Islamic State is no different. Everyone assumes their messaging targets one of two types: 1) Jihad- minded Individuals , and 2) frustrated islamists that can be pushed towards violent radicalisation. Our research, however, has shown that there are two other categories that they also target: 1) The citizens of whatever region or town they intend to attack, as a form of psychological warfare that aims to break their spirit and limit the resistance they might face, and 2) The “Lone Wolf” types: Males who suffer from arrested development, wishing to fulfil fantasies of warfare, conquests and gun battles, probably fuelled by too many hours playing “Call of Duty”. For those who might think we are reaching, there is a category of IS’s propaganda films of battles and gun fights that are recorded by “GoPro” cameras that eerily mimic the First-shooter video game experience of such games for their viewers. It’s a theory, but the fact that they are creative enough to utilise “GoPro” camera for their communications, makes one wonder if the legendary “influx of foreign fighters” joining the ranks of the IS are really all Jihady islamist types, or if there are some who are in it looking for kicks and action. Whether that was their intention or not is up for debate, but the fact remains that the IS’ propaganda’s methods of delivery are efficient to the degree that they have probably reached them.

Methods of delivery



IS has three aims: to recruit, radicalize and raise funds, and they use social media for all three. While they exist almost on all Social media platforms, Twitter is their preferred method of delivery for a number of reasons that can be summed up in one sentence: they are eerily good at using it.



Unlike many other social networks, Twitter offers the best degree of anonymity, the fastest and largest reach, and since it’s based upon crowdsourcing information, it’s perfect for both disseminating propaganda and fundraising. Also unlike the other social networks the IS has tried to use and found their accounts suspended and blocked very quickly (Facebook, Diaspora and Friendica to cite a few), it’s hard to do so on twitter given the size and numbers of their supporters on it.



The is have official Twitter accounts that are specialise, diversified, and multi-lingual. They also have an army just for hashtag engagement and retweets, with a focus on their messaging and branding concepts that would put most digital agencies to shame. They have a benchmark of 10,000 mentions of their hashtags on daily basis. They really know how to invade the timeline and trend listings, and have created special tools to do just that.

Tweets of War



With their “Dawn of Glad Tidings” application, which was launched in April, 2014 and lately killed by Google play, the IS has effectively managed to replace the drums of war with the tweets of war. Users who download the app register on it with their Twitter accounts and gives the app creators permission to use their users timelines to disseminate their messaging. The app gives the IS the power to tweet from the accounts of all their registered users when they need to, allowing them to flood the timeline with the same tweet, which could include a link, a hashtag and/or an image, while keeping in mind to have those “tweet waves” spaced out in order to avoid triggering twitter’s spam detection algorithms. It allows them to have unparalleled reach, which they can use for any of their three goals or target audience: For example, the day they invaded Mosul, they tweeted 40,000 tweets about it, making them seem like an endless legion to anyone monitoring them.



This app may seem invincible, but its main strength is actually its weakness too. It made the identification process for twitter fairly easy; the people who have tweeted the same tweet at that certain time are IS people, and their accounts could get suspended in the same automated manner they use. The controversy here is regarding the number of those who retweet, which surpasses the number of those who the application tweeted for. Should twitter suspend their accounts as well and lose the holiest of all twitter mantras, that “Retweets are not endorsements”? Or does it refuse to do so, and allow them to continue to operate and spread their message? What do you think?