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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:14 pm
Time: 10:14 pm
Results for propaganda
1 results foundAuthor: Milton, Daniel Title: Pulling Back the Curtain: An Inside Look at the Islamic State’s Media Organization Summary: As he spoke, the visual behind him was supposed to remind the audience, in part, of the lengths to which the Islamic State's enemies would go to prevent the group from spreading its message to a larger audience. The image behind the speaker was a mangled metal frame and other debris, the remains of what had been an Islamic State media kiosk. The messenger was John Cantlie, a British journalist who had been captured by the Islamic State nearly four years earlier in November 2012. His words were an attempt to drive the visual image home: "The kiosks are used to distribute pamphlets and information regarding the Islamic State and serve to expose some of the lies and propaganda the Western media continues to peddle in their never-ending mission to tarnish the image of the Islamic State." What goes unsaid is that the Islamic State's effort to "distribute pamphlets and information" is not just a benign messaging campaign. Instead, it is a highly choreographed influence campaign in which the group has invested significant institutional effort. While the results of the Islamic State's media eforts have received a significant amount of attention from governments, scholars, and analysts, most of these research eforts have been based on the group's end products: videos, picture reports, texts, and magazines. This is of necessity, as information or documents based on the group’s internal media policies and procedures have been difficult to find. However, captured enemy material obtained by the U.S. Department of Defense in operations targeting senior Islamic State Khurasan personnel in Afghanistan and provided to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) provides a look inside the group's media operations. This examination comes through the lens of a number of memos and documents that communicate instructions from the Islamic State's Diwan of Central Media (central media organization in charge of the group's media operations) to those charged with coordinating the group's media efforts in Afghanistan. It is important to note that although the materials used here came from Afghanistan, they do not appear to be specific to the Islamic State's Khurasan media bureau, which is responsible for the group's media productions in Afghanistan-Pakistan. There are no specific references in any of these documents to issues unique to Afghanistan. Instead, despite the fact that the Department of Defense obtained them in Afghanistan, they appear to be the general training materials that the Diwan of Central Media provided to media bureaus across all the Islamic State's provinces (wilayat). Indeed, the fact that most of these documents were recovered during an operation targeting a senior Islamic State-Khurasan media official increases their value and supports the assumption that these documents were actively being utilized to shape the group's media operations. Another important issue related to these documents is the timeframe that they cover. The documents themselves were obtained by the Department of Defense between 2016 and 2017. However, this date provides little evidence about when these documents were created. Unfortunately, it is impossible to state the date of authorship for most of these documents with any level of certainty. Indeed, there are only three date reference points in the entire set of documents. The first is in a document titled "Information Security." This particular document carries a specific date, Muharram 1437, or October-November 2015. The other documents do not actually carry a date, but instead we can assess the date based on the items referenced in the document. One of these documents, "Top Ten Releases Month of Rajab," references various Islamic State videos that were released in May 2016. These 10 videos are among the 34 videos evaluated in spreadsheet format in another document, "A Table of the Statistics for the video releases." Although it may be tempting to use these two specific dates as the bookends for the likely time of authorship for the other documents, there is no way to be sure of the origin date for most the other documents. The CTC is committed to continuing to search out unique sources of data to provide insight into the workings of terrorist organizations and, when possible, making them available to the broader research community, which will undoubtedly add its own insights and continue to enhance our collective understanding. To further this end, all of the documents (both the original Arabic as well as English translations) referred to in this report are being released on the CTC's website at ctc.usma.edu. These 13 documents provide interesting and important insights on four main topics regarding the Islamic State's media organization. The first insight is that these documents offer, for the first time, a conclusive link between the Islamic State's central media bureau and Amaq News Agency. More specifically, these documents show that the central media bureau considered Amaq to be on par with other previously recognized central media entities such as Al-Naba and Al-Bayan. Furthermore, the Islamic State's Diwan of Central Media encouraged local media bureaus to send content to Amaq, going so far as to make cooperation with Amaq a part of each local media bureau’s monthly evaluation. The second is that these documents show the emphasis the organization placed on producing different types of products in order to convey a broader narrative about the caliphate. Although examining the group's propaganda products after they have been released demonstrates this as well, the level of detail and efort put in by the group to this end, as highlighted by these documents, is more expansive than previously acknowledged. Third, these documents show very clearly how the Diwan of Central Media created rules, evaluations, and internal memos that were designed to strengthen the centralization of the group's media bureaucracy, solidifying the central media organization's control over what and how the local media bureaus carried on their propaganda work. This finding runs counter to some discussion on decentralization as one of the main reasons for the success of the group's media operations. There certainly is an element of decentralization to the group's online activities, but these documents show there is a limit to the group's willingness to decentralize in the media realm. Indeed, in a document titled "General Guidance and Instructions," we find the following counsel: "We also advise the brothers to avoid innovation because it is mostly the main cause of mistakes." Finally, the documents show that the Islamic State's media organization exercises self-awareness in terms of its potential vulnerability. Indeed, the documents provide several insights into how the media side of the organization recognized that its role in promoting the group meant that the media components of the group would be in possession of information that could result in harm if it were known or otherwise obtained by the enemy. This led the group to focus on the importance of information security among media operatives. The Islamic State's efforts in each of these four areas provide a more detailed understanding not only of how the group organized and implemented its media strategy, but also how a militant organization was able to capture the world's attention using the art of propaganda. This report proceeds by examining each of these four areas in turn. Details: West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 2018. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 29, 2018 at: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2018/08/Pulling-Back-the-Curtain.pdf Year: 2018 Country: International URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2018/08/Pulling-Back-the-Curtain.pdf Shelf Number: 151276 Keywords: ISIS Islamic State Media Campaign PropagandaTerrorism |