The Matrix of Islamic State’s Propaganda

This chapter offers an overview of the Islamic State’s (IS) magazines, discusses their main features, and analyzes their content. Focusing on the language and images used to promote the group’s “master narrative,” the chapter shows how the group’s magazines attempt to reach out to specific target audiences, tap into several mechanisms of radicalization, and promote other components of the group’s full-spectrum propaganda. It is argued that IS’s magazines came to play a pivotal role at the center of the organization’s ambition to develop a comprehensive and multidimensional propaganda machine. Although access to and dissemination of these magazines is illegal in many countries, they are available online. More worryingly, perhaps, these magazines now constitute a new “golden standard” that extremist groups from across the ideological spectrum will inevitably want to copy.