Watch: How ISIS’ Propaganda Imitates Western Films And Games

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One of the most distinguishing, and decidedly modern, features of ISIS is its approach to propaganda. Like no group before it, ISIS learnt to exploit the very systems and techniques developed in the West against the western world itself. Their recruiting campaigns have become sophisticated like no other group’s and are one of the main reasons ISIS is able to attract such a large body of supporters, followers, and fighters.

The following video demonstrates how ISIS employs western cultural memes – characters, scenes, and themes – contained in Hollywood movies, video games, and music video, sometimes nodding to them, and frequently directly copying. Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, and American Sniper serve as examples to imitate for the group’s propaganda arm. By appropriating western culture, ISIS manages to speak directly to the audience it wishes to influence most: susceptible, disenfranchised western youths with a bent for violence.

This demonstration draws on the research of Javier Lesaca, a visiting researcher at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. Lesaca analysed nearly 850 ISIS videos that were published between January 2014 and September 2015. According to his analysis, 15% of the propaganda videos have been inspired by actual western video games and movies.

His analysis shows that “ISIS has established a new kind of terrorism, using marketing and digital communication tools not only for “socializing terror” through public opinion as previous terrorist groups did, but also for making terror popular, desirable, and imitable.”

“This new phenomenon of unpredictable consequences could be described as “marketing terrorism,” Lesaca writes in a post explaining his research.

While ISIS may not necessarily be a lasting force in itself, if the techniques developed by them spread to other terrorist groups it would be an incredibly worrying development.