Jihadist Propaganda On Social Media: An Examination of ISIS Related Content On Twitter

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Jihadist Propaganda on Social Media: An Examination of ISIS Related Content on

Twitter
Article · October 2018

DOI: 10.4018/IJCWT.2018100101
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Al-Rawi, A. & Groshek, J. (2018). Jihadist propaganda on social media: An examination of ISIS
related content on Twitter. International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism, 8(4),
1-15.
Jihadist propaganda on social media: An examination of ISIS related content on Twitter
This study is focused on ISIS’s followers on Twitter in an effort to understand the nature of their
social media propaganda. The research study provides unique insight into one of the largest data
sets that investigates ISIS propaganda efforts on Twitter by examining over 50 million tweets
posted by more than 8 million unique users that referenced the keywords “ISIS” or “ISIL”. We
then searched this corpus for eight keywords in Arabic that included terms of support for ISIS
and the names of different Al-Qaeda leaders. A mixed research method was used, and the
findings indicate that ISIS’s activity on Twitter witnessed a gradual decline, but the group was
still able to post different types of tweets to maintain its online presence. Also, the feud between
ISIS and Al-Qaeda was intense, ongoing, and prevalent in online interactions among ISIS
followers. The study provides an understanding of using big data to better grasp the propaganda
activities of terrorist groups.
Keywords: ISIS, social media, Twitter, terrorism, e-Jihad, big data
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Introduction
This study, which analyzes the efforts of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to promote
itself and disseminate information on Twitter, examined a unique big data set on ISIS that
included over 46 million tweets. The majority of previous studies focused on English language
productions of ISIS, while this study empirically investigates Arabic language tweets, which
further makes it a unique contribution to literature on terrorists’ groups branding on social media.
The study also provides empirical evidence on the feud between Al-Qaeda and ISIS members,
and how the latter members were pressuring other extremists to join ISIS through social media.
Building on the theoretical concept of propaganda, the study discusses the way ISIS brands itself
on Twitter and cites primary sources taken from ISIS’s Arabic publications in order to further
understand how this terrorist group envisioned jihad and its objectives. In doing so, we build
upon earlier work that examined the audiovisual productions and social media use of ISIS
(Quilliam, 2014; Winter, 2015a and 2015b; Stern & Berger, 2015). In its self-identified Jihad,
previous work has shown that ISIS views media as an important tool to brand itself and promote
group’s extremist ideology. Further, it used to run a sophisticated and centralized media
apparatus with its own news agency called Amaq (depths), Dabiq magazine in Arabic and
English, as well as the Al Bayan radio station in Mosul that also featured a mobile app
(Callimachi, 2016; Shiloach, 2015a).
It is important to note here mainstream Arab societies and Muslim cultures reject ISIS’s
radical and extremist ideology and often counters it in many ways including the use of humor
and comedy (Al-Rawi, 2016a). This kind of cultural rejection of extremism includes using the
popular term Daesh (‫ )داﻋﺶ‬to refer to the terrorist group which is an indirect way to demean and
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discredit ISIS (Ibid.). On the other hand, ISIS wants people around the globe to use the term
“Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” or “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” ( ‫اﻟﺪوﻟﺔ اﻷﺳﻼﻣﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻌﺮاق‬
‫ )واﻟﺸﺎم‬in order to gain credibility among people since this description entails an
acknowledgement that the terrorist group is both Islamic and a state, while average Muslims
reject these two designations. This is one of the reasons that explains why we chose the two
terms ISIS and ISIL to search for sympathizers who are more likely to use these mentions and
hashtags.
The centralization of ISIS’s media division is further evident in the hierarchy of its
leadership. As one example, in September 2016, the Pentagon announced that it killed Wael
Adel Al-Fayadh, or Dr. Wael, who is regarded as ISIS’s Minster of Information (BBC Arabic,
2016; Warrick, 2016). Al-Fayadh was responsible for supervising the production of promotional
productions in the different provinces controlled by ISIS. He was also close to Mohammed Al-
Adnani, the former spokesperson of ISIS, who was also killed in an earlier US drone attack.
Currently, ISIS’ spokesperson is Abi Hasan Al-Muhajir who was appointed in December 2016
(Huffington Post Arabic, 2016a).
In this regard, there was a feud between Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Current Al-Qaeda leader
Ayman al-Zawahiri disowned ISIS in 2013, leading to the creation of a jihadist global civil war
especially after the declaration of the Caliphate by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (Byman & Williams,
2015). al-Zawahiri justified his action by stating: “We do not acknowledge this Caliphate. We do
not see Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as one worthy of the Caliphate…..When Gaza was burning
beneath Israeli bombs, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not support it with one word, but his main
concern was that all the mujahedeen pledge allegiance to him, after he assigned himself to be the
Caliph without consulting them” (McConnell & Todd, 2015). On its turn, nine former Al-Qaeda
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fighters joined ISIS and accused the group of committing different ‘unIslamic’ acts like “softness
in dealing with the Shi’a, daring to declare that former Egyptian President Morsi was a Muslim,
‘excessive complimenting of what was called the Arab Spring’, supporting political work rather
than fighting, and repudiating ISIS” (Habeck, 2015). Due to the ideologically-based feud,
bloodshed followed between Al-Qaeda and ISIS “particularly after the Islamic State…
demanded that Al Qaeda and all other Muslims obey its commands” (Ellis, 2016). This feud is
evident in the social media data examined in this study, as will be explained below. In the
following section, a theoretical discussion is provided on the concept of propaganda in the
contemporary online, social, and mobile media ecosystem with a focus on ISIS’s vision of media
and e-jiahd.
Jihad, social media, and propaganda
Before discussing ISIS and its online media strategies, a review on the connection between
terrorism and propaganda is provided. Jowett and O’Donnell define propaganda as the
“deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and divert behavior
to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist” (2012, p.7). Indeed,
media can be used as a tool by terrorists to spread fear “and an uncertain future” (Altheide, 2007,
p. 287). Weimann mentions that terrorism and propaganda are closely connected, for “terrorists
see the media as a powerful tool in their psychological warfare…. They can use terrorist attacks
to promote their cause on the media agenda and thus on the public agenda, they can turn to their
own people seeking legitimacy, support, and funding and even recruit new members” (2005, p.
383).
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Many scholars argue that there is a symbiotic relationship between media and terrorism
due to their mutual dependence on each other as terrorists “thrive on the oxygen of publicity”
(Wilkinson, 1997). In other words, without media coverage and propaganda, the impact of the
terrorists’ action and their imagined and real influence cannot be noticed by the public. Schmid
and de Graaf state that “an act of terrorism is in reality an act of communication” (1982, p. 14).
Hence, many scholars have argued that terrorism is “propaganda of the deed” (Bueno de
Mesquita & Dickson, 2007) whose original concept was developed by three Italian anarchists
(Errico Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero and Emilio Covelli) in the late nineteenth century. In fact,
terrorism is often defined as “an act of propaganda. The terrorist act, in and of itself,
communicates that change can occur and the violence of the act commands the attention of the
society. The propaganda effect is in the act of securing the attention of the populous and then
providing the message through the violence” (Garrison, 2004, p. 265). For the terrorist group,
violent acts are symbolic as they are meant to send different messages beyond the creation of
fear, hence the term “terrorism of the spectacle” (Baudrillard & Valentin, 2002, p. 15). Walter
Laqueur observes that the “success of a terrorist operation depends almost entirely on the amount
of publicity it receives” (as cited in Schmid, 2005, p. 141) which explains why terrorists groups
find it imperative to actively spread information about their ideology and various activities along
many media outlets, especially social media. The ultimate main objectives of using propaganda
are to create fear, mobilize people to support the terrorist’s cause, and disrupt their opponents’
efforts (Wilkinson, 1997). Since the modern media era, propaganda has been utilized as a
mobilization tool by a wide range of organizations (Wright, 1991; Paletz & Schmid, 1992;
Nacos, 1994), and ISIS has invested heavily in the use of propaganda. From its early emergence,
ISIS has become well known for using various propaganda methods and approaches to brand
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itself to the world in different languages (Farwell, 2014; Neer & O'toole, 2014; Winter, 2015a).
As such, ISIS cultivated an online media strategy that has been labeled Jihad 3.0 (Al-Rawi,
2016b) due to its highly sophisticated media campaign that involves the use of
“multidimensional propaganda” (Saltman & Winter, 2014), such as high-tech filming and editing
equipment. There is also evidence that suggests that a number of ISIS’s operations in some
countries have been funded by Bitcoin transactions done in the Dark Web (McCoy, 2017).
In order to understand ISIS’s media strategy, it is vital to provide some historical insight
into some Islamic terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda terrorist group; some of the documents
retrieved from Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad demonstrate his emphasis on the role of
online media, stating “media occupies the greater portion of the battle today”. Further, in a letter
he sent in 2002 to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, Bin Laden said “It is obvious that the media
war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach 90 percent of the
total preparation for the battles” (as cited in Klausen, 2015). Similarly, al-Zawahiri, mentioned
once that “We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of
the media”, while the American jihadist Omar Hammami, who was one of the leaders of al-
Shabab terrorist group, declared that “The war of narratives has become even more important
than the war of navies, napalm, and knives” (Cottee, 2015).
One of the earliest works that assisted in founding the ideological foundations of ISIS
was Abu Bakr Naji’s “The Administration of Savagery” which was posted online around 2004
(Wright, 2006; Naji, 2006). In this work, Abu Bakr Naji defines the Jihadist struggles as “media
battles” (2006, p. 73) and repeatedly mentions the term “deceptive media halo” that is
undertaken by ISIS’s opponents in order to “falsely” persuade the masses that Jihad is a wrong
practice. Naji is deeply critical of Al-Qaeda for stressing the need to address the elites and
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ignoring the masses (al-awam) who should have been given more emphasis. He stresses the need
to establish a media division “whose purpose is to communicate what we want to say to the
masses and focus their attention on it, even if this requires exposing the group to danger that is
comparable to the danger of a military operation….” (pp. 95-6).
Here, Naji affirms that members of the general public have to be persuaded first, stressing
that the “role of media politics is to gain [people’s] sympathy, or at the very least neutralize
them” (2006, p. 52). In other words, media should play three functions including persuading a
large number of people to join the jihad, “offer[ing] positive support, and adopt[ing] a negative
attitude toward those who do not join the ranks” (pp. 50-1). Media should also address people
living outside the group’s control to instigate them “to fly to the regions which we manage,
particularly the youth after news of (our) transparency and truthfulness reaches them so that they
may be fully aware of the loss of money, people, and worldly gains” (p. 51). The last group that
needs to be targeted includes enemy combatants particularly “who have lower salaries, in order
to push them to join the ranks of the mujtahids or at least to flee from the service of the enemy”
(pp. 50-1).
Several audio-visual materials released by ISIS stress the importance of media in
supporting the Islamic State in line with Naji’s above recommendations. In one example, the
Shumukh Instigation Workshop (n.d.) released a video entitled “Journalist, you’re a Jihadist” in
which several interviews with ISIS fighters were conducted. Many responded on the role of
media, stating: “Your support lifts the morale of ISIS fighters.” The video’s goal is to provide a
social media literacy crash course on whom to follow, block, and how to retweet as well as the
importance of protecting ones online privacy by using the Dark Web (Tor network) and virtual
private networks (VPNs). In several selected examples, the narrator provides the following
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online advice: “You need to group all links in a file sharing site; publish the link in the body of
the tweet and fill the rest with hashtags.” Indeed, the primary message in this training video is
“Your tweets are your weapons,” and that those who tweet for ISIS are also “mujahedeen just
like those who are fighting in the field” (Shumukh Instigation Workshop, n.d.). Other ISIS
efforts to educate its followers on the use of Twitter have come from Afaaq Electronic
Foundation, which is specifically focused on “raising security and technical awareness” among
jihadists (O'Neill, 2016).
Another important printed Arabic work that has been recently released by ISIS is entitled
Journalist, you’re a Mujahid (ISIS, 2015). The booklet begins with a quotation by Osama Bin
Laden on the importance of media role in Jihad, stating:
Journalists and writers have a great and significant impact in directing the
battle, demoralizing the enemy, and lifting up the nation’s morale….It is
the time now for media to take its right place and perform its required
role in countering the fierce campaign and public crusading war [against
Islam]. This must be done in all media forms: visual, audio, and written.
Media workers, whether be journalists, analysts, or correspondents, must
be up to the level of responsibility and the [gravity of] events in
performing their required role, enlightening the nation, and showing the
reality of the enemies by revealing their plans and schemes. They should
all stand up in one front with all their affiliations as the enemy today does
not differentiate between one group or another (ISIS, 2015, p. 10).
The booklet details various aspects of media work that can assist ISIS in its mission, for
media is regarded as “a double edged sword as it can please the faithful and make the enemies
agitated” (ISIS, 2015, pp. 33-34). In its vision of a media system, journalists have a vital role in
countering a cultural invasion “that is more powerful than a military one” (p. 44), while an
emphasis is placed on creating a totalitarian structure wherein “the journalist must obey the order
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of his Emir or his media superior who has assigned tasks and duties and [often] prefers that the
journalist works in a certain region” (p. 36).
In addition, various audio and visual productions are produced by an “army of
journalists” who should never complain for working long hours because they are part of Jihad
and “will be rewarded with a promise to enter Heaven” (ISIS, 2015, pp. 20-21). In other words,
journalists are “regarded as jihadists similar to other ones” because they urge for Jihad (p. 25),
and they should perform their duties similarly to the way soldiers do in an army.
Interestingly, the booklet lists some principles of good journalism since “monotheistic
and faithful journalists [should] say the truth and express justice at a time when truth sayers are
rare” (ISIS, 2015, p. 40). This official ISIS publication stresses the need to convey reality as it is
“at a time when most – if not all – of the well-known media outlets have professed in lying
together with their journalists who have become experts in fabrication. They have accepted to
become amplifiers of atheism, prostitution, and deceit and have combated religion and decency”
(p. 42).
Again, it is crucial to reiterate that ISIS has run a very sophisticated and organized media
body. As another example to this point, an ISIS correspondent nicknamed Abu Salih, revealed to
Iraqi authorities after being captured in 2016 that the terrorist group insisted on having a very
centralized effort in running its media bureaus that were structured in a hierarchal system
involving correspondents, copy editors, and graphic designers. The correspondents only took
videos and pictures in high definition quality to generate visual appeal for ISIS’ messages. These
items were then sent to ISIS’ Amaq news agency, which ran detailed editorial reviews of all
media materials to ensure their credibility before disseminating or archiving them. Each
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correspondent was responsible for a certain district or area in the Iraqi and Syrian provinces,
whether be under the control of ISIS or not (Al-Qudus Al-Arabi, 2016).
From a journalistic perspective, ISIS has attempted to give more credibility to its
messages (Miller & Higham, 2015) and the Amaq News Agency, whose “reporters try to appear
objective” (Callimachi, 2016), carefully choose special terms to demonstrate some kind of
transparency. Further, ISIS’ systematic media strategies also included sophisticated digital
recruitment and radicalization efforts through “virtual coaches” that often employed encrypted
mobile technologies and social media. For example, when ISIS wanted to recruit a member in
India through Twitter, they asked him to use ChatSecure mobile app and then do the following:
When he used his laptop, he was told to contact the handler via Pidgin, another
encrypted tool. He was told to create an account with Tutanota, a secure email
service. And the handler taught Mr. Yazdani how to use the Tails operating
system, which is contained on a USB stick and allows a user to boot up a computer
from the external device and use it without leaving a trace on the hard drive
(Callimachi, 2017).
In relation to online media, Arquilla and Ronfeldt (2001) introduced the concept of
“netwars” to describe the situation in which various groups seem to be small, dispersed, and
often disorganized in what is termed as an “internetted” practice. Indeed, this new sociotechnical
reality defines the nature of the “cyber army” of ISIS, and it increases the difficulty of curbing its
online influence. ISIS uses only a few centralized Twitter accounts that “tweet official statements
and news updates” as well as provincial accounts run from the provinces ISIS controls “which
publish a live feed about [local] Isis operations” (Kingsley, 2014). However, ISIS’ “jihobbyists”
(Winter, 2015a, p. 7), fan clubs, sympathizers and followers on social media largely operate
without centralization (Melchior, 2014) or an “obvious hierarchical structure,” suggesting that
online activity is largely “driven by self-organization” (p. 1460). It is thus important to also note
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here that many women are actively supportive of ISIS, which can be found in the example of the
Al-Khanssaa Brigade and their online presence represented in spreading pro-ISIS messages
especially due to their high connectivity (Manrique et al., 2016).
Aside from the above activities, ISIS also supported hacking groups which could be
regarded as part of its cyber army. For example, the Cyber Caliphate as well as the Hackers’
Union of the Caliphate were one of ISIS’ tools to exert influence as it often boasted of any
successful attempts at hacking websites or social media outlets by using a network of
sympathetic hackers from different parts of the world (BBC News, 2015b, Steinblatt, 2015;
Huffington Post Arabic, 2016b). These efforts were sometimes organized and centralized as
some of its members received training on hacking in some closed forums (Kavanaugh &
Shiloach, 2015). There were reported to be approximately five hacking groups affiliated with
ISIS that began working together in April 2016 under one banner called the “United Cyber
Caliphate” (Alkhouri, Kassirer & Nixon, 2016). The efforts of these hacking groups also include
blocking people or organizations on mobile apps and social media, such as the case of blocking
‘Raqqa is slaughtered in Silence’ on Telegram (Shiloach, 2016), which is an encrypted mobile
application.
Here it is important to note that before being largely banned on Twitter, it was estimated
that ISIS had about 46,000 Twitter accounts that were sympathetic or supportive of the group,
most of which having been based in Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (Berger & Morgan, 2015, p.
2). In addition, the European Union commissioned the European Law Enforcement Agency,
Europol, to block ISIS’ access to social media (BBC News, 2015a). Of course, the decentralized
nature of social media communication by ISIS sympathizers makes it challenging to counter ISIS
messages (Melchior, 2014) even though social media itself can offer some potential security
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benefits such as disclosing valuable information about the location of some ISIS fighters
(Castillo, 2015). According to Berger and Morgan’s study on ISIS Twitter accounts, 73% of
followers selected Arabic as their main language followed by 18% English and 6% French, “a
finding that tracks to some extent with the distribution of Western foreign fighters” (2015, p. 14).
In another related study, Milton (2016) examined 51 user accounts on Twitter that posted ISIS
content and found that “over 80 percent of them had been removed within two days of posting
the Islamic State-related content” (p. 45).
Along these lines, several social media companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google
agreed to stop ISIS from freely disseminating its content on their platforms (Andrews &
Seetharaman, 2016). From mid-2015 to early 2016, for example, Twitter shut down over 125,000
ISIS-linked accounts (Jeong, 2016). One study conducted by Milton (2016) showed that banning
the group from social media has had some impact on the group’s presence, and that its media
production decreased considerably. Specifically, in August 2016, there were 194 posts from
ISIS-linked media production units which were far fewer than the than the 761 posts found in
August of the previous year before the censoring began. However, many observers believe that
ISIS’s sympathizers “are everywhere on Twitter, despite the social-media network’s efforts to
ban them” (Cottee, 2015). In line with the above discussion, this study attempts to explore
whether there are any ISIS followers who use the popular references to the group on Twitter,
namely ISIS and ISIL.
Based on this review of literature and pressing questions about the growth of ISIS,
particularly in recruiting outside core nations in the Middle East, we sought to better understand
the online presence of ISIS on Twitter and investigate the nature of its members’ interactions.
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Our analyses were therefore guided by the following research question: In relation to its Jihadist
propaganda, was ISIS still active on Twitter? If yes, what did ISIS’ followers tweet about?
Method
For this study, representative samples of tweets that mention the keywords “ISIS” and
“ISIL” in English starting from October 2014 until early 2017 were drawn from the Boston
University Twitter Collection and Analysis Toolkit (BU-TCAT) (Borra & Rieder, 2014;
Groshek, 2014. 1 A large data set was analyzed that was collected from October 8, 2014 to
February 12, 2017 and consisted of 50,412,848 tweets sent by 8,113,446 unique uses (28% of
tweets contained no links). As far as we are aware, this study offers an analysis of the largest
data set that investigates ISIS on Twitter, and the frequency of tweets is summarized in Figure 1.
-- Insert Figure 1 about here --
By comparison, an earlier study by Magdy, Darwish and Weber (2015) examined ISIS’
use of Twitter for a period of less than 3 months, and the data set that they examined consisted of
about 3.1 million tweets. The reason behind choosing the English hashtag #ISIS is that it is a
popular one that is often used by ISIS members inside and outside its controlled territories
(Callimachi, 2017) since the Arabic acronym #DAESH (‫ )داﻋﺶ‬is regarded by the terrorist group
as a derogatory one, as stated above. In our keyword searches, we only used Arabic language
characters because it is considered the top language used by the majority of ISIS members
1
Due to a technical error, data was not collected for the period between October 11 and November 28, 2016.
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(Berger & Morgan, 2015) and that Arabic often accounts for “97% of all language uses” in ISIS
disseminated materials (Milton, 2016, p. 48).
In this first stage of the study, we aimed at examining whether the terrorist group is still
actively present on Twitter by searching the data for sympathizers with the use of four Arabic
keywords: staying (‫)ﺑﺎﻗﯿﺔ‬, strengthened (‫)ﺗﺸﺘﺪد‬, Caliphate (‫)ﺧﻼﻓﺔ‬, and Caliph (‫)ﺧﻠﯿﻔﺔ‬. These terms
are often used by ISIS’s sympathizers as their main mottos and goals to show that the group will
remain united and strong (Al-Rawi, 2016b). In the second stage of the study, we examined the
alleged feud between ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorist groups that has not been empirically examined
previously. For this purpose, we employed four Arabic keyword searches that are related to Al-
Qaeda leaders: Laden (‫)ﻻدن‬, Al-Zawahiri (‫)اﻟﻈﻮاھﺮي‬, Al-Awlaki (‫)اﻟﻌﻮﻟﻘﻲ‬, and Al-Zarqawi
(‫)اﻟﺰرﻗﺎوي‬. Both stages of data analysis look at qualitative and quantitative markers of interactions
to directly address our research question and make a contribution unique to terrorism research,
and in studying ISIS.
Findings, discussion, and conclusion
In relation to the first stage of the study and to answer the research question, the results
indicate that ISIS-related tweets – especially those that promote the group dramatically decreased
from late 2014 to late 2016 (see Figure 2). We searched for tweets using four Arabic language
keywords and found over 23,249 corresponding tweets sent by 11,728 unique Twitter users.
Table 1 shows the most active pro-ISIS Twitter users who showed either direct or indirect
sympathy or affiliation with the terrorist group. As of January 2017, all the users’ accounts have
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been blocked except for one @DrAhmadjoma who often retweets and disseminates news on
ISIS’s expansions with a highly sectarian rhetoric.
-- Insert Figure 2 about here --
-- Insert Table 1 about here --
On another level of investigation and by using a computational method for text analytics,
a program called WordStat was used to analyze 23,249 tweets in order to identify the most
recurrent terms and phrases that assist in understanding the patterns and themes (Lopatin,
Samuel-Azran, & Galily, 2017).
In relation to the thematic classification of these selected tweets, our study reached
similar findings to that conducted by Milton (2016) and Klausen (2015) since the pro-ISIS tweets
were mostly related to Jihadist propaganda by promoting military achievements and reporting
from battle, religious governance or instruction, interpersonal communication in the form of
conversations among ISIS fighters, threats against the West and Islamic/Arab governments, and
other posts that mention tourism or projecting a utopian view of ISIS-controlled lands. As shown
in Table 2, the most-recurrent phrases are principally related to boasting about the alleged
victories of ISIS or threatening their enemies, while the Shiite-Sunni sectarian dimension is also
evident. For example, one tweet in this list uses a pejorative term which is “Shiites are donkeys”
(n=252), while another refers to the “Crusading and Safawi coalition.” The Safawi is pejorative
term for Shiites that invokes a historical association with the Persian invasion of some Arab
lands in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most Shiite Arabs find the term derogatory against them
(Mahood & Rane, 2017) partly because some Sunni extremists intentionally affiliate them with
an ethnic Persian group that is distinct from other Shiites. What is prominent in all the phrases is
that many of ISIS followers and sympathizers merely retweet the same message tens and
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sometimes hundreds of times by using different hashtags in order to spread the message as broad
as they can to the social network.
-- Insert Table 2 about here --
By paying a closer examination of some ISIS Twitter users, we find that there is a clear
coordination amongst them which is part of interpersonal communication tweets mentioned
above. For instance, the profile of @isis884 reads as “Please do not follow me. The Islamic
State remains.” One interpretation of this description is to attempt to remain anonymous or to
hide the identity of other users in order to remain active online. Other Twitter users ask for
coordination; for example, @allahmyloveme tweeted: “Hey brothers, let’s use an active hashtag
to troll the infidels” (November 11, 2014), and some posts direct attacks on specific users.
Examples of this practice include @HamzaHunter6 who called @gaycaliph an “apostate”
(November 16, 2014), and @Abo3omar30 who requested his followers to
“support+follow+disseminate” five Twitter users who are also ISIS followers (January 11,
2015). The latter example is the most popular type of interpersonal communication tweets in
these corpora, which aligns with previous studies. In one such example, in his study on ISIS on
YouTube, Al-Rawi observed a similar online practice that was at least partially borrowed from
the Swarmcast communication model (2016b) where different ISIS users attempt to coordinate
their efforts in order to support the group. In the study reported here, many users mention the
Arabic hashtag “Accounts that deserve support” (‫ )ﺣﺴﺎﺑﺎت ﺗﺴﺘﺤﻖ اﻟﺪﻋﻢ‬in which they list a number
of key ISIS members whose Twitter accounts need to be followed or posts that they would like
to have to be retweeted, such as those of @Mo7_AbuAzzam1, @isis-cyberarmy, and
@Isis_Cyberarmy. In sum, ISIS tweets are mostly focused on disseminating news on its military
achievements, uttering threats against its enemies as well as attacking Shiites, and Twitter
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remains a notably active platform for ISIS members though there has been a clear decline in their
online activities on Twitter over the last 2-plus years.
Further, we wanted to understand the alleged feud between Al-Qaida and ISIS, so we
used four Arabic searches related to Al-Qaeda leaders. The results reveal that 692 tweets were
posted by 516 unique users in relation to Al-Qaida leaders, and Table 3 shows the most active
and relevant Twitter accounts that referred to them, all of whom have had their Twitter accounts
blocked as of February 2017. The keywords include: Laden (‫( )ﻻدن‬n=301 tweets), Al-Zawahiri
(‫( )اﻟﻈﻮاھﺮي‬n=189 tweets), Al-Awlaki (‫( )اﻟﻌﻮﻟﻘﻲ‬n=4 tweets), and Al-Zarqawi (‫( )اﻟﺰرﻗﺎوي‬n=198
tweets).
The findings indicate that there is a very intense feud between Al-Qaeda and ISIS on
Twitter, and within this dataset ISIS followers routinely call Al-Qaeda leaders and sympathizers
“Jihadi Jews” (‫)ﯾﮭﻮد_اﻟﺠﮭﺎد‬ in order to imply that their cause is either not truly Islamic or to
associate Al-Qaeda with Israel. In fact, the above hashtag was retweeted 37 times, often being
accompanied with other hashtags like #Al-Zawahiri, #Al-Maqdissi (the Jordanian salafi leader
who once mentored Al-Zarqawi), and #Abu Qumama, which is a pejorative reference to Abu
Qutada al-Filistini, the famous Palestinian preacher and Al-Qaeda sympathizer.
Many other tweets carry personal attacks against Al-Zawahiri, while Al-Qaida leaders,
and especially Osama Bin Laden seem to be much more respected by ISIS followers. As
examples, Al-Zarqawi and Bin Laden are often mentioned with reverence such as stating “Let
Allah have mercy on them,” and their statements are either cited or various hyperlinks to their
audio-visual speeches are referenced in the tweets. Bin Laden, in particular, is given more
attention as he is often called ‘The Lion of the Umma” [nation] or “The Sheikh of Mujahideen,”
“the reforming Imam,” and that there is “No Al-Qaida after Bin Laden”. One tweet refers to an
17
1-15.
ISIS operation as a revenge for Osama Bin Laden’s death, while another one mentions a newly
formed ISIS-run school for children that was renamed as “Osama Bin Laden.”
On the other hand, Al-Zawahiri is repeatedly called the “deviant” (‫ )اﻟﻤﻨﺤﺮف‬and his group
is labelled as “the destroyed structure” (‫)اﻟﺒﻨﯿﺎن اﻟﻤﮭﺪوم‬. One ISIS follower, @JehadSaryah, for
example, tweeted the following about Al-Qaida group: “The Al-Zawahiri’s hyenas have
sharpened their knives to stab the body of the Caliphate after their scandal has been disclosed in
Dabiq magazine. Let Allah paralyze them” (29 December, 2014). It is important to note here that
Al-Qaida users that could be expected to defend Al-Zwahiri are almost non-existent in the
dataset that we examined.
It is important to mention here that despite that the majority of those users are
sympathetic towards ISIS, there are a number of users that have trolled the terrorist group by
using the same hashtags that ISIS members use. For example, Twitter user @cusois tweeted 127
times using ISIS-linked hashtags, yet the Japanese language tweets are meant to troll ISIS and
make fun of its members especially with the use of memes and photoshopped images. The same
applies to other users like @kuri_kerkuk (n=103 tweets) and @abo_kafr_kurdi (n=81 tweets)
who seem to be affiliated with Kurdish fighters combating ISIS and often use ISIS-related
hashtags to disseminate news on the victories of Kurdish forces against the terrorist group. We
believe that the rationale behind this counter-narrative strategy is to demoralize ISIS members by
waging a psychological warfare and showing them the grave causalities and losses the group is
suffering from.
Some observers suggested blocking ISIS access to the Internet by removing their Twitter
accounts and Facebook pages as part of the continuous efforts to wipe out the organization
online (Greenberg, 2015; Calamur, 2016). For example, Facebook claims that it uses Artificial
18
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Intelligence to detect and remove terror-related content, stating: “Today, 99% of the ISIS and Al
Qaeda-related terror content we remove from Facebook is content we detect before anyone in our
community has flagged it to us, and in some cases, before it goes live on the site. We do this
primarily through the use of automated systems like photo and video matching and text-based
machine learning. Once we are aware of a piece of terror content, we remove 83% of
subsequently uploaded copies within one hour of upload” (Bickert & Fishman, 2017). However,
completely blocking ISIS’ Internet access is unlikely to succeed in any meaningful way because
its members are actively disseminating its promotional materials on diverse online platforms, so
defeating the group must begin with aggressively refuting its ideology. Due to the current
increasing defeat of ISIS and the loss of its territories, it is expected that the terrorist group will
continue to thrive online and less offline (Warrick, 2017), by further exploiting popular hashtags
like #ISIS and #ISIL. The media apparatus of ISIS and its propaganda were still active and
strong though the actual caliphate could end up solely as a virtual one in the near future (Clarke
& Winter, 2017). This is another reason why studying these hashtags is important because
researchers can understand the new ways by which Jihadist propaganda is being disseminated
and shared.
As with all studies, it is also important to point out some of the limitations of this
particular piece. Though our dataset is very large, it has been challenging to find and research all
possible appropriate keywords to search – but we feel searching in Arabic provides a highly
valuable approach not often employed in other works. Second, some of the keywords used could
have been slightly changed by Twitter users for a variety of purposes. For example, we found
that the name Al-Zawahiri was intentionally misspelled as Al-Zawaritti because the change
becomes a pun to make the name of Al-Qaeda leader sound like the Arabic word for farting
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(‫)اﻟﻈﻮارطﻲ‬. This name change was difficult to detect though it was retweeted 10 times by
different users who disseminated a news story on how the real successor of Osama Bin Laden’s
Jihadist campaign was Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi rather than Al-Zawahiri. Future studies can build
on this work to develop a focus on other keywords and areas as those emerge. Another limitation
of the study is related to the lack on Twitter users’ geolocations as users often do not disclose
such information, but it could have been useful in determining where pro-ISIS tweets originated
from. Also, other social media outlets like YouTube and Facebook can be used to trace the
activities of ISIS, while comparisons among these interactive platforms can be useful in order to
see which outlet is the most popular and effective in recruiting new terrorists.
In conclusion, the study we report here on ISIS’ Twitter activities is one of the most
expansive ones, and indicates that there have been some successes and improvements in
minimizing ISIS’s online outreach. Still, as we found within over 50 million units over a two-
year period, it remains literally impossible to completely eradicate the group’s online presence
on Twitter. As other researchers have similarly concluded, terrorists and their sympathizers
always find alternative methods and even platforms to post propaganda on social media and
elsewhere. For example, justpasteit.com (Milton, 2016) as well as archive.org are among the
most popular alternative websites used by ISIS to upload their Jihadist videos, pamphlets, books,
and images. In other words, there needs to be a better and more effective strategy to limit and
counter the dissemination of propaganda by ISIS and its sympathizers which can be attained if
joint government, corporate, and public efforts are merged.
20
1-15.
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Appendix
Figure 1: Frequency of “ISIS” and “ISIL” mentions on Twitter from October 8, 2014 to
February 12, 2017
29
1-15.
Table 1 – The most active Twitter users referencing pro-ISIS keywords
No User No. of tweets

1 LinnOlsson16 1619
2 ArmyYassin2 663
3 DrAhmadjoma 497
4 _Maqalat_ 300
5 m5tsrj 204
6 boom9annboul 139
7 W2RISIS 129
8 booom9annnn 118
9 mr_ismail36 117
10 2550015_cr 111
30
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Table 2 – The top most recurrent phrases used in the tweets
No Phrase* Freq.
‫ﺑﺎﻗﯿﮫ وﺗﺘﻤﺪد‬
1 [Remaining and expanding] 1669
‫دوﻟﺔ اﻻﺳﻼم ﺑﺎﻗﯿﮫ وﺗﺘﻤﺪد ﺑﺎءذن ﷲ‬
2 [The Islamic State remains and expands by Allah’s willing] 1619
‫اﯾﮭﺎ اﻟﻜﻔﺎر ﺟﺌﻨﺎﻛﻢ ﺑﺎﻟﺨﻠﯿﻔﺔ اﻟﻜﺮار دوﻟﺘﻨﺎ ﻣﻨﺼﻮرة‬
[Hey infidels, we’ve come to you with our courageous Caliph. Our
3 State is victorious] 730
‫اﻟﺸﯿﻌﺔ ﺣﻤﯿﺮ‬
4 [Shiites are donkeys] 252
‫اﻟﺨﻼﻓﺔ ﺳﺘﻜﻮن واﻗﻌﺎ‬
5 [The Caliphate will be a reality] 225
‫اﻟﻨﺼﯿﺮﯾﺔ اﻧﺘﮭﺖ و ﺗﺘﺒﺪد‬
6 [The Nusairri (Syrian Alawite regime) has ended and disintegrated] 180
‫ﺧﻮف اﻟﻐﺮب ﻣﻦ اﻟﺨﻼﻓﺔ اﻹﺳﻼﻣﯿﺔ‬
7 [The Western fear from the Islamic State] 101
‫ﺣﺘﻰ اﺟﺪادﻧﺎ ﯾﻘﺎﺗﻠﻮن ﻣﻌﻨﺎ‬
8 [Even our great grandfather fight with us] 77
‫اﻟﺘﺤﺎﻟﻒ اﻟﺼﻠﯿﺒﻲ اﻟﺼﻔﻮي اﻟﺴﻠﻮﻟﻲ ﺟﺎء‬
[The Crusading, Safawi and Salwli (Muslim hypocrites) coalition has
9 arrived] 73
‫أول ﻧﺸﺮة إﺧﺒﺎرﯾﺔ ﺑﺎﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻷوردﯾﺔ‬
10 [First (ISIS) newscast in Urdu language] 63
‫ﺑﻐﻞ اﻟﺮوم ﯾﺼﻠﻲ إﻟﻰ ﻣﺮﯾﻢ‬
11 [The Rome’s mule (Obama) prays for the Virgin Mary] 53
‫أﺷﺒﺎل اﻟﺨﻼﻓﺔ‬
12 [The Caliphate’s cubs (ISIS children)] 43
‫ﺻﻠﯿﻞ اﻟﺼﻮارم‬
13 [Salil Al-Sawarim (The Clinging of the Swords chant)] 42
*All the texts between parentheses are our translations, and the texts between brackets are further explanations.
31
1-15.
Figure 2: Frequency of “ISIS” and “ISIL” mentions on Twitter from October 8, 2014 to
February 12, 2017 based on four Arabic keyword searches
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
1/8/2015
2/8/2015
3/8/2015
4/8/2015
5/8/2015
6/8/2015
7/8/2015
8/8/2015
9/8/2015
1/8/2016
2/8/2016
3/8/2016
4/8/2016
5/8/2016
6/8/2016
7/8/2016
8/8/2016
9/8/2016
10/8/2014
11/8/2014
12/8/2014
10/8/2015
11/8/2015
12/8/2015
10/8/2016
11/8/2016
12/8/2016
32
1-15.
Table 3 – The top most active Twitter users mentioning Al-Qaeda leaders
Tweet
No User Frequency
1 m5tsrj 41
2 officeblo 12
3 isisallwrld_3 8
4 Raqqa_Sl 8
5 W2RISIS 8
6 isisallwrld_4 6
7 adghbjurvj6665 5
8 Jbhatalnusra_18 5
9 00jihad7777 4
10 isisallwrld_1 4
11 isisallwrld_2 4
12 isisallwrld_5 4
13 abobakerisis6 3
33
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Jihadist Propaganda on Social Media: An Examination of ISIS Related Content on

Article · October 2018

Ahmed Al-Rawi Jacob Groshek

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Jihadist propaganda on social media: An examination of ISIS related content on Twitter

activities of terrorist groups.

Keywords: ISIS, social media, Twitter, terrorism, e-Jihad, big data

(Callimachi, 2016; Shiloach, 2015a).

(Huffington Post Arabic, 2016a).

following section, a theoretical discussion is provided on the concept of propaganda in the

Jihad, social media, and propaganda

than the war of navies, napalm, and knives” (Cottee, 2015).

comparable to the danger of a military operation….” (pp. 95-6).

Several audio-visual materials released by ISIS stress the importance of media in

jihadists (O'Neill, 2016).

Laden on the importance of media role in Jihad, stating:

journalist works in a certain region” (p. 36).

In addition, various audio and visual productions are produced by an “army of

whether be under the control of ISIS or not (Al-Qudus Al-Arabi, 2016).

without centralization (Melchior, 2014) or an “obvious hierarchical structure,” suggesting that

especially due to their high connectivity (Manrique et al., 2016).

successful attempts at hacking websites or social media outlets by using a network of

‘Raqqa is slaughtered in Silence’ on Telegram (Shiloach, 2016), which is an encrypted mobile

the Islamic State-related content” (p. 45).

namely ISIS and ISIL.

-- Insert Figure 1 about here --

disseminated materials (Milton, 2016, p. 48).

and in studying ISIS.

Findings, discussion, and conclusion

ISIS’s expansions with a highly sectarian rhetoric.

-- Insert Figure 2 about here --

-- Insert Table 1 about here --

Samuel-Azran, & Galily, 2017).

from battle, religious governance or instruction, interpersonal communication in the form of

as they can to the social network.

-- Insert Table 2 about here --

coordination amongst them which is part of interpersonal communication tweets mentioned

State remains.” One interpretation of this description is to attempt to remain anonymous or to

Examples of this practice include @HamzaHunter6 who called @gaycaliph an “apostate”

(November 16, 2014), and @Abo3omar30 who requested his followers to

to have to be retweeted, such as those of @Mo7_AbuAzzam1, @isis-cyberarmy, and

online activities on Twitter over the last 2-plus years.

Qutada al-Filistini, the famous Palestinian preacher and Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

dataset that we examined.

joint government, corporate, and public efforts are merged.

threat landscape. Flashpoint. Retrieved from http://fortunascorner.com/wp-

Al-Rawi, A. (2016a). Anti-ISIS Humor: Cultural Resistance of Radical

Ideology. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 17(1), 52-68.

Political Violence. 1-30.

Altheide, D. L. (2007). The mass media and terrorism. Discourse &

Communication, 1(3), 287-308.

Terrorism. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-steps-

and militancy. Rand Corporation.

Quarterly, 101(2), 403-415.

raid near Raqqa in Syria. Retrieved from

team. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33220037