The Islamic State has lost thousands of fighters to death or imprisonment and suffered the collapse of its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria. But the global reach of the group, also known as ISIS, is still vast, in part because of its sophisticated media production and the people around the world who use it.
On New Year’s Day, a man carrying an Islamic State flag killed at least 14 people when he drove his car into a crowd in New Orleans. Authorities say there is no evidence that the man, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, had active ties to the terrorist group. But the FBI said it “was 100 percent inspired by ISIS.”
It is not yet clear what the specific internet content of Mr. Jabbar could see or how else could he have been radicalized. Experts have noted that the placement of the flag on the truck is reminiscent of the flag displayed by ISIS in the media campaign urging followers to “run over them without mercy”. Authorities said he had posted several videos on his Facebook account pledging allegiance to ISIS before the attack.
From online videos to social media platforms — and even the Islamic State’s weekly newsletter — the group that wants to force all Muslims to strictly adhere to the religion’s earliest teachings has a very modern media strategy.
“Terrorism is essentially communication,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former United Nations diplomat who is senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, a think tank with offices in New York and Berlin. “It’s not warfare, because obviously ISIS can’t defeat the West militarily, right? They tried and it didn’t end very well.”
Terrorist newsletter
How did the Islamic State maintain its influence? In part, transforming his movement into a global franchise outside the Middle East, with active branches in Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Caucasus and Turkey, among other places.
But the glue that holds the disparate branches together – and also helps inspire “lone wolf” terrorists like Mr Jabbar to carry out their own attacks – is Islamic State’s sophisticated media operation. Experts say that while it is doubtful that the media operation has a physical headquarters, it is highly centralized and controlled by the Media Authority. Most of its results appear to come from affiliates in Africa, which have been the most active in terms of attacks recently.
The group also publishes an online weekly newsletter called Al Naba, or The News, which details the group’s latest ventures, implicitly encouraging followers to commit acts of violence.
“Al Naba’s newsletter comes out every Thursday, which is one of the more impressive things the group can do,” said Cole Bunzel, an expert on militant Islam in the Middle East at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
“They have an editorial; they cover different provinces, as they are called; cover that week’s attacks. They add up the number of attacks and victims they claim. And it’s the main way they stay connected with their global support base,” he said.
The latest edition of the newsletter, published on January 2, did not mention the New Orleans attack, and the Islamic State did not claim responsibility for it.
Al Naba was initially published through the Telegram messaging app and other platforms, constantly adjusting as different channels were shut down, said Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute who has tracked the activities and propaganda of Islamist groups for more than 15 years.
The group’s supporters also spread messages on Twitter, Facebook pages and other social media platforms, according to the researchers. When their user profiles are blocked, they often just create new ones. Islamic State used decentralized online tools that are harder to shut down and moved some of its messages to the dark web, Mr. Zelin said.
Terrorism analysts say it has been easy for extremists to connect with potential supporters on social media because of a lack of efforts by both some companies that operate the platforms and governments to enforce a crackdown.
Mr. Schindler said that in light of the attacks in New Orleans, both political parties should ask: “Why is this huge industry with these profits not helping our security services to prevent such attacks? Why don’t we get a tip, like we get from banks and every financial institution in North America and around the world, that there’s a terrorist here, or a tip that there’s a process of radicalization going on?”
Terrorism experts say the Islamic State’s control over media and messaging is key to its success. Al Qaeda, from which the Islamic State split in 2013, has laid the groundwork, publishing online and print magazines and producing videos, as well as social media.
‘Kill them wherever you find them’
In January 2024, the extremist group revived a campaign aimed at its global supporters: “kill them wherever you find them”, a reference to a verse in the Qur’an.
The idea, first floated in 2015, was to encourage potential followers to commit jihad at home instead of traveling to Iraq and Syria. This concept became even more important after the caliphate was defeated.
During the period when the Islamic State held sway in Syria and then Iraq (2013-2017) and was eager to gain supporters in the West, it was known for publishing gruesome depictions of violence, such as the beheading of photojournalist James Wright Foley.
Experts now say the increasingly daunting challenge is that social media platforms are doing much of the work of spreading the Islamic State’s message, as algorithms seeking to drive engagement drive some users deeper and deeper into the extremist worldview.
“Terrorist groups no longer have to put in a lot of effort to radicalize people; the algorithm does it for them,” Mr. Schindler said. “The point of the algorithm is to keep the user on the platform, give them what they like, and if it happens to be Islamic extremism or if you’re in the process of radicalization, your worldview changes.”
In Syria, where Islamic State used a long civil war to seize large swaths of territory, only to eventually lose it to US-backed fighters, the group has begun to recover, accelerating its attacks. That trend could continue as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was suddenly toppled in December by another extremist group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, once linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda.
The situation is still fluid, but fear some analysts that the Islamic State could retake the field amid the chaos. The group’s newsletter referred disparagingly to Hayat Tahrir al Sham as “jihadists-turned-politicians” but did not call for attacks on them.
Meanwhile, Hayat Tahrir al Sham and other rebel groups say they should take over the role of guarding Islamic State prisoners in eastern Syria and manage the camps that hold about 40,000 Islamic State fighters and their families – a job that has been carried out for nearly five years by the Syrian Defense Forces Kurdish-led forces backed by the United States. Many terrorism experts question how Hayat Tahrir al Sham, which once had ties to the Islamic State but then sharply broke away, could carry out the mission of suppressing it.
Islamic State recently renewed its “Breaking Down the Walls” media campaign, which encourages imprisoned fighters to escape prisons in eastern Syria and free their families.
If it succeeds, Mr. Zelin said, it would be a “disaster.”
