The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a Salafi Jihadist movement that uses violence and propaganda to promote the reestablishment of an Islamic caliphate (territory) governed by a conservative (most believe radical) interpretation of Islamic law. ISIS is currently the most popular of the violent extremist movements and its success is due to the attention given by ISIS leadership to the strategic use of mass communication.
The approach is based on the exploitation of the Internet and social media to foster propaganda and proselytism. The analysis of the ISIS’ use of mass communication reveals its similarity to effective corporate communications strategies. ISIS has developed a strong brand image that made the organisation known, recognizable and strongly characterized.
The act of translation draws a parallel between the communicative methods and strategy of the terrorist organization and the construction dynamics of a brand. The simple replacement of terms belonging to the Islamic State’s lexicon with those that are typical of a brand, leads to the constitution of two products that hold different goals, yet share the same strategic project.
The manifesto is a simple and effective tool to communicate the essence of a brand, summarizing objectives, values, and philosophy.
The design of the installation exploration takes the visitor on a path of interaction with data and visualizations.
The space erected for the exhibition is in itself a metaphor of the parallelism between the terrorists’ and any company’s organization. However, this ambivalence is not initially declared: the visitor begins the exploration from the outside space, where elusive sentences are shown on the walls, that could assume different meanings depending on perspective and frame of reference. These equivocal messages lead the visitor to the reading of a document, which at first sight might seem a regular document used to apply to a company.
What that document really is, is a composition of rearranged sentences extracted from the official media used by the Islamic State. Nevertheless, all the connoted terms, just the explicit ones, were modified in order to obtain a clean, non-specific declaration of a non-specific company stating its goals and presenting itself: a manifesto.
The following step of the exploration carries the visitor inside the installation space. Here the original, unchanged fictional manifesto is displayed and the odd prank is unveiled. From this point on, the manifesto becomes a guide for the visitor to the exploration of the whole installation. Previously enigmatic, if not meaningless, numbers and notes on the document lead the visitor to the interaction with physical, auditory, and digital data visualizations, designed to make the complexity of the phenomenon object of our research visible and accessible through different supports, as pinholes on a black box.
All the contents of the installation are highlights selected among the results of our research.
The study examines the phenomenon of religious violent radicalization in depth in two distinct moments. First, the official data about foreign fighters was collected from scientific papers and databases of official organizations, research centers and consortiums that make this data publicly available. In a second moment, we directly scraped the web to harvest data in order to depict the current development of the controversy. Here, we focused on the public image of the Islamic State.
Given the similarities of ISIS’ attention for communication to that of a corporation, we analyzed the propaganda of the terrorist organization in the same way that one would do with a brand.
“IS a Brand” is a study on how the Islamic State approaches communication as a mean to foster propaganda and recruitment calls.
“IS a Brand” clearly displays what the Islamic State is saying and how the European media perceive and spread their message via mass communication.
“IS a Brand” ultimately analyzes how all these factors play a role in defining the (brand) image of the Islamic State.
To access the complete research, report, visualizations and data, please visit our research website.
Project by Serena Del Nero, Marco Mezzadra, Claudia Pazzaglia, Alessandro Riva, Alessandro Zotta
Faculty: Paolo Ciuccarelli, Marco Fattore, Stefano Mandato, Michele Mauri, Salvatore Zingale
Teaching assistants: Ángeles Briones, Tommaso Elli, Michele Invernizzi, Azzurra Pini
