ISIS propaganda machine deeply hurt by group’s defeats

by: Hossam al-Haddad

Several indicators are emerging to testify to the ceaseless weakening of the propaganda machine of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

On November 23rd, the BBC Monitoring Team ran a quantitative analysis of ISIS media content, in which it noted that this content had become a shadow of its former self.

Before losing the Islamic Caliphate’s presumed capital in Syria’s Raqqa, the team noted, ISIS propagandists ran 29 items on ISIS media every day.

This content has, however, fallen down to ten items every day, the Monitoring Team said.

It added that ISIS media production has been on a steady decline since Raqqa’s fall on October 17, 2017.

There is also an equal drop, the Monitoring Team said in its analysis, in the number of statements published by the pro-ISIS news agency, Amaq. It said the statements dropped from 421 in September this year to 193 in October. The number of videos ran by the agency, the team noted, also dropped from 52 in September to 11 in October.

ISIS statements also fell down to 52 in October from 138 in September, the team said. The same applies to photos published by the agency, which dropped to 81 in October from 175 in September.

The ISIS Rumiyah magazine, which appeared in different languages, was not published in October for the first time since September 2016, the Monitoring Team said.

Figures in this regard can be testimonies to the marked weakening in ISIS’s media abilities in the aftermath of Raqqa’s fall.

This weakening reflects the losses ISIS had sustained in both Syria and Iraq. It is also an indication of ISIS propaganda machine succumbing to international efforts to trim its influence in cyberspace.

It is, however, far from a declaration of the demise of the organization.

ISIS has a knack for maneuvering. It recently released a video to document its battles in Syria, Egypt and Iraq. By so doing, it wanted to convince its members that the battle is far from over and that defeat should never be followed by surrender. ISIS also wanted to say that it would continue to exist, despite the losses it had sustained.

Nevertheless, ISIS could not produce any media content for 24 hours, from November 22nd, which is unprecedented hitherto. The organization brooked no delay, since its emergence in 2014, in using cyberspace to advance its goals, by continually posting content on its media.

ISIS has been utilizing a number of media, including the Internet and 3G and 4G telecommunications technologies, to spread its ideas and attract recruits from all countries since its birth.

The organization also designed special applications, utilizing the mobile operating system, Android, to spread the word about its operations everywhere.

Some of these applications, according to Amaq, had already been hacked. Consequently, the agency said, caution was required when downloading these applications.