As a beguiling tool of political persuasion in times of war, peace, and uncertainty, propaganda incites people to take, often violent, action, consciously or unconsciously. This pervasive influence is particularly prevalent in world politics and international relations today. In this interdisciplinary Handbook, the editors have gathered together a group of world-class scholars from Europe, America, Asia, and the Middle East, to discuss leadership propaganda, war propaganda, propaganda for peace marketing, propaganda as a psychological tool, terror-enhanced propaganda, and the contemporary topics of internet-mediated propaganda. Unlike previous publications on the subject, this book co-edited by Paul Baines, Nicholas O'Shaughnessy and Nancy Snow brings to the forefront current manifestations and processes of propaganda such as Islamist, and Far Right propaganda, from interdisciplinary perspectives.
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""David Miller and Rizwaan Sabir take a very different approach to Seib in the previous chapter and equate public diplomacy, strategic communications and psychological operations as forms of propaganda designed to promote the military capacities of those who advocate them. Propaganda, for Miller and Sabir, is far from simply a question of ideas but a matter of ‘political action’ that ties together practices of persuasion and coercion. Identifying four key areas of propaganda – its institutions, doctrine, practice and its outcomes – in relation to contemporary examples concerning counter-terrorism raids in the UK, terrorism statistics across Europe and the government organizations dedicated to producing propaganda, they conclude that techniques like public diplomacy and propaganda are far from benevolent forms of political action but part of the ‘weaponization of information’.""
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Kültür ve İletişim
Easy and relatively unrestricted access to the Internet has introduced numerous transformations in the way individuals interact with each other and their environment. Prominent among these changes are those related to communication studies and its substrata of propaganda. A large number of studies, which have analyzed the online terrorist propaganda activities, discuss the issue within the framework of how the terrorists "use" or "exploit" new media technologies for their purposes. What is strongly highlighted in these studies is the instrumental role of the Internet in facilitating the success of terrorist propaganda. In contrast to this standard view of social media and Internet as a medium of communication, drawing from Science and Technology Studies, we offer an alternative perspective of human and technical actors as being mutually intertwined and equally possessed of agency in the process of propagandistic communications. Thus, this study discusses how Internet has facilitated sweeping changes across the entire spectrum of propaganda, ranging from production and dissemination to reception. The online propaganda and counterpropaganda campaigns currently being waged online by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the US State Department are presented and contrasted as examples of the old and new models of propaganda.
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Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts
This chapter examines the meaning, types, and practice of propaganda by two prominent terrorist groups, namely ISIS and Boko Haram, and how deception and deceptive communication form aspects of their propagandist tools. The chapter begins with the conceptual description and discussion of deception and propaganda and situate them in the research literature. It goes further to examine the impact of the internet in the enhancement and spread of terrorist propaganda by ISIS and Boko Haram; the reasons and various forms of propaganda and radicalization online are also examined. Some specific samples of terrorist propaganda by the two terrorist organizations are qualitatively analyzed using discourse analytical methodology. Studies in counter-propaganda appears to be the future research direction; although it has been argued that aggressive counter-narratives may be counterproductive, grievances expressed in terrorist propaganda should be addressed.
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The Sage Handbook of Propaganda
Propaganda is a mechanism of the information domain that attempts to shape and influence the cognitive domain concerning events and processes that are located in the physical domain. It is a very deliberate tool that is intended to mobilise public sentiment through creating an environment that is dominated by an emotional form of logic, often in a very binary ‘reality’ involving a series of radical opposites. The use of rhetoric is an essential element in the application of propaganda within the setting of information warfare, which forms of the basis of the appeals and emotional conditioning. This application has been witnessed in the Syrian conflict from the very beginning, where the propaganda of aversion (Assad – “bad”) is contrasted against the propaganda of attraction (‘rebels’ – “good”). Ultimately this concerns the various audiences’ perceptions and opinions of the Syrian war and especially the intangible aspects of political legitimacy/illegitimacy. Seeming ‘small’ or ‘trivial’ details are in fact key to influencing and persuading an audience to think and act in a pre-determined manner. This chapter will show the importance and relevance of the details that go into scripting the propagandistic narrative as a means of shaping the cognitive domain through distorted and manipulated material in the information domain, which in turn is used as a means to form public consent on a policy issue. Four newspapers have their content analysed in the first four days in the wake of an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. This content was consistent in nature and followed a propaganda role where media acted as an instrument of war.
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This paper explores the recent findings of some empirical research concerning Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham's (ISIS') communication and tries to synthesize them under the theoretical frame of propaganda's concept and practices. Many authors demonstrated how ISIS propaganda campaigns, in particular those deployed on cyberspace, proved to be effective in recruiting new members in both western and Muslim countries. However, while most of the researches focused on ISIS's communication contents and narratives, few works considered other methods and techniques used for actually delivering them. This is a regrettable missing point given the fact that communication's and neurosciences' studies demonstrate that not only what is communicated but also the techniques adopted bear important consequences on the receiver's perceptions and behavior. Therefore, this article analyzes in particular the findings of researches carried out by communication scholars, social psychologists, and neuro-cognitive scientists on ISIS' persuasive communication techniques and demonstrates their importance for security studies' analysis of ISIS' propaganda. It argues that ISIS' success in mobilizing people and make them prone to violent action relies on—among other factors—its knowledge and exploitation of sophisticated methods of perceptions' manipulation and behavior's influence. This, in turn, demonstrates ISIS' possession of state-like soft power capabilities effectively deployed in propaganda campaigns and therefore calls for a more complex understanding of its agency.
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The main problem that this paper attempts to focus on is how the Islamic State could successfully recruit thousands of people from all around the world. Besides, this article aims to discover why IS uses extreme brutality and why they attack Shia. Perhaps the most crucial aspect is how the Islamic State exploits each of its operations to serve their propaganda. This paper focuses on several aspects to achieve a better understanding of IS’s sophisticated propaganda and recruitment strategies. This paper, briefly, reviews the history of this organization, from its inception until now. The main purpose of this is to demonstrate how the group contrives to behave in such a way as to attract people. Additionally, this paper highlights the employment of propaganda focusing on those aspects that relate directly to the propaganda strategy, especially, the ploys that the Islamic State uses to entice people and the characteristics of its targeted audience. Finally, this paper comes to a conclusion that may assist to limit the activities of this terrorist organization by focusing on the religious side of IS propaganda. Such limitation may be achieved by disclosing, to people in general and IS followers in particular, that this terrorist group is abusing Islamic teaching to achieve its own political agenda.
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The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has made great use of the Internet and online social media sites to spread its message and encourage others, particularly young people, to support the organization; to travel to the Middle East to engage in combat, fighting side-by-side with other jihadists; or to join the group by playing a supporting role, which is often the role carved out for young women who are persuaded to join ISIS. Today, in the field of fighting the ideology of extremism and terrorism, the main concern is that of the vast spreading of propaganda of the "Islamic State" primarily through the Internet. ISIS propaganda is now more frequently aimed at Westerners and more specifically at the “Millennial generation”, spreading i.e. the idea of what the real Salafi Islam is and how to fight and destroy the "unconventional Islam” which takes on board western principles. Clearly, social media has proven to be an extremely valuable tool for the terrorist organization and is perfectly suited for the very audience it intends to target. Increasingly, ISIS’ posts on websites include sophisticated, production-quality videos and images which incorporate visual effects. Which messages from jihadists induce young Westerners to become involved with the terrorist group? What convinces young people from Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, many of whom run away from home still in their teens, to leave their homelands to join ISIS on the battlefield? Which risks does a home country face when its nationals communicate and establish relationships with members of ISIS? Could the jihadist social network propaganda machine be shut down? Weighing all factors, is stopping ISIS rhetoric on the Internet the best course of action? To understand the project, several propaganda documents coming from sources inside the Daesh were analysed to identify the online grooming to recruit Jihadists and the instructions to follow to win respect in the Arabian world.
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