Suchergebnisse

Utilizing constitutive and online networking theories, this book explores how militant proto-states create lasting, adaptable, identity-based systems that work to attract and sustain the attention of followers. This book showcases how standard media systems theory fails to fully explain the media systems of these organizations as a basis for building a revised theoretical lens that comprehends these emergent systems in the 21st century global media context.

Utilizing constitutive and online networking theories, this text explores how militant proto-states create lasting, adaptable, identity-based systems that work to attract and sustain the attention of followers. This book showcases how standard media systems theory fails to fully explain the media systems of these organizations as a basis for building a revised theoretical lens that comprehends these emergent systems in the 21st century global media context.

Abstract
In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) emerged as one of the most prominent global security threats after securing large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq. By 2018, it has lost nearly all of its territory to the various military forces allied against it. ISIS's territorial expansion correlated with the group's online propaganda activities. With the established contribution of online media efforts to ISIS recruitment and fundraising, isolating factors that correspond to changes in the group's media output takes on added importance. The following study, designed to track ISIS's territorial expansions and contractions from July 2014 to September 2018 against the group's visual output levels and content, seeks to resolve such disputes by both expanding the period of analysis and deconflating land acquisition from other possible variables of analysis. Specifically, the study explores the relationship between territorial control and the visual imagery in ISIS's two English-language online magazines, Dabiq and Rumiyah, across all published issues from July 2014 until September 2017. It also examines any territorial links to the visual imagery in al-Naba', the group's Arabic-language newsletter, from December 2015 until September 2018. We find that territorial control is significantly associated with changes in the number of images for all publications. Furthermore, we observe an overall trend from military to state-building imagery as territorial losses occur. Thus, territorial changes appeared to influence ISIS's messaging as the group tried to reassure its readers of its continued state presence through a shift toward state-building imagery.

Images of death and dying in the media around the globe have a symbiotic relationship with nation states as they can bolster state control by defining who has the right to take lives in the interests of the community, by identifying enemies of the state, by demonstrating dominance over enemies, and by lending a moral posture to the state's war efforts. Previously, the growing corpus of research on media's display of death and about to die images has focused almost exclusively on media outlets that bolster established states on the global stage. By analyzing 1965 death and about to die images displayed in Dabiq, ISIS's English-language magazine, and al-Naba', the same group's Arabic-language newspaper, this study adds an understanding of the messaging strategies deployed by groups striving to challenge, rather than reinforce, existing national boundaries. The findings suggest that while ISIS adopts some standard media practices, it also utilizes unique and audience targeted approaches regarding the frequency of image use, the identify of the corpses, the display of dead bodies, and the presentation of those responsible for the pictured dead bodies in its media campaign.