MWDIR · Media Warfare and the Discourse of Islamic Revival: The Case of the Islamic State (IS)

Media Warfare and the Discourse of Islamic Revival: The Case of the Islamic State (IS)

Broadly speaking, the developments and changes in dynamic of communication have challenged traditional notions in mass media scholarship e.g. media power, representation and audiences (KhosraviNik , 2014). A trajectory of such ‘notional’ change has affected norms of political communication in general and political activism in particular. ‘Ordinary’ users become part of production, consumption and distribution of content with few or no barriers in the form of traditional gate-keeping practices (Unger, Wodak, and KhosraviNik , 2015). In such environment, radical movements exploit social media to mobilise new recruits by reinforcing certain discourses. In other words, IS employs strategic rhetorical propaganda by which it attracts not only (young) individuals from the Middle East, but also from EU countries, the United States of America and other regions. Increasingly, the radical and fundamentalist thrust of IS seems to be at odds with other Islamist movements, e.g. Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and even Al-Qaeda. The thorough review of the literature on these movements indicates that there are two overlapping discourses which dialectically feed into each other to form the essence of the IS worldview, namely the discourses of religious revival and political emancipation. The former is a manifestation of a universal propensity in all religions, faced with a perceived threat of modernity to their traditional established worldview. The latter is a political and ideological framework. This project claims that the rise and “success” of IS discourse is to be examined within a wider socio-political contextualisation of matters of identity, migration, multiculturalism, etc. As such, the current project has investigated the IS propaganda model based on Critical Discourse Analysis. In examining the discourse of the Islamic State (IS), this study has aimed to answer the broad question: 1) How does IS construct itself in propagating its discourse worldwide? In answering this general question, the study aimed to answer these sub-research questions 1. What rhetorical propaganda devices are manifested in IS discourse? 2. What are the visual frames employed in IS’ self-constructions? 3. What conclusions can be drawn from analysis of IS discourse? This project is important for the society in two dimensions: 1) This project contributes to understanding of IS’s ideological discourse and its impact and consequences for the EU. Without understanding the socio-political and cultural –religious dimensions and the ensemble of discourses that frame them, Islamic fundamentalism in general, and IS’ in particular, are liable to be discounted as merely fringe movements with an apocalyptic agenda. This project expounds security consequences for the EU that might rise from IS mobilization of people. 2) This project has contributed to the study of discourse of Islamist movements during times of crises or conflicts and on how this discourse has a high-impact on influential mechanisms that affect societies. The overall objectives of the project were 1. To map the general politics of ethnicity, language and culture in the context of Islamist movements. 2. To examine language representation, i.e. the specific perspectives from which Islamist movements are constructed and the language used in their texts or talks to assign meanings to them and their social practices. 3. To critically examine the power relations between the discourse of Islamist movements and their self-representation.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union