Online Territories of Terror

Abstract

The fronts on which groups such as the Islamic State wages the media war have evolved. The modus operandi of Salafi-Jihadi groups, such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda (AQ), means that they can appear to be degraded or in decline when closer inspection of their documents, written mainly in Arabic, shows that their operations and media strategy have evolved. The Islamic State uses dispersed forms of network organisation which constantly reconfigure, much like the way a swarm of bees or flock of birds constantly reorganizes mid-flight. This marks a shift from the broadcast models of communication during conflict to a new dispersed, fast moving, and resilient form, the user-curated ‘Swarmcast’. Through the Swarmcast, the Islamic State has continued to disseminate its set of coherent narratives expressed in tens of thousands of written documents and in thousands of professionally made audio visual productions. This chapter demonstrates the role Telegram and Web3 now play in the information ecosystem and media strategy employed by Salafi-Jihadi groups.