Marketing Terrorism: 565 Videos to Understand ISIS Digital Propaganda and Engagement Strategy

• In Event: Political Engagement and Agenda Setting in a New Media Ecosystem

Abstract

Cascading activation model proposed by Robert Entman (2003) has been one of the leading models to explain how frames are activated and reasons for their success (Rowling, Jones and Sheets, 2011; Fortner and Fackler, 2014). This model explains how frames are spread from political elites to public opinion through media. On the one hand, hegemony and legitimation of political and media voices in the public sphere are considered. It must be said that in this model, institutions and media are clearly identified. On the other hand, frames and their success are explored. Frames in this case are also attributed to the defined source.
This paper tries to review Entman theory taking into account the incidence of Twitter in the frames delivery. As Orihuela states (2011), Twitter has reversed the process of influence, leading it from “public” to the media. Therefore, legitimation in public opinion and framing issues should be different. For instance, in the era of transparency, it could happen that we have no clear identification on who is really delivering messages.
In this paper we try to analyze how twitter users behave and what kind of messages are activating not only in the digital sphere, but also in the traditional media. As some authors confirm, there is some kind of correlation between both agendas, the digital one and the traditional one (Rubio, 2014). Other relevant questions are: What are the successful tweets and consequently, the dominant frames in the social media arena? Are they contributing to the real debate in the public sphere? Are citizens and traditional media awarded of who is creating those frames?
On September 2nd 2014, the terrorist of the so called “Islamic State” (ISIS) beheaded the journalist Steven Sotloff. The video of the execution was uploaded in a social media platform and distributed massively through public opinion via Twitter in a well coordinated campaign. During the first six hours after the announcement of the execution, 1,700 anonymous twitter accounts distributed the terrorist message to more than 2,5 million twitter users. The tweets created and distributed by ISIS in this action were, in fact, during the first hours, the only source of information about this issue.
This paper provides and exhaustive qualitative and quantitative analysis of more than 6,000 tweets published by ISIS anonymous fan accounts after the execution of Steven Sotloff (September 2nd), David Haynes (September 14th) and Alan Henning (October 3rd), as well as qualitative and quantitative analysis of the news published by the most important newspapers and TV stations in Europe and USA about these issues. The object of the investigation is to determine if the frames created and delivered by thousands of anonymous ISIS fans in Twitter match with the dominant frames delivered to the public opinion by the traditional media.
Conclusions lead us to reconsider how influence processes are activated in the new social media landscape, creating a new cascade activation model. We propose another paradigm of influence and our conclusions let us contribute some important aspects on the new technologies and democratic debate. We can say with Dahlgren that “Public sphere is no guarantee for democracy” (2005: 152) and old democracy problems are the same we can find now.

Authors

• Javier Lesaca, U de Navarra

• Teresa Sadaba, U of Navarra