The complexity of Islamic State's multi-layered messaging

Islamic State's (IS) messaging is sophisticated.  The group's information operations are central to its political and military strategy.  IS deploys information operations that reach out to diverse audiences in order to achieve a variety of goals (to project state-hood, military effectiveness, law and order, abundance, an inter-generational project with unceasing momentum).

For IS, information operations are crucial for shaping perceptions of the conflict amongst populations in IS-controlled territory, as well as for instilling anxiety in opposing forces and governments.

This centrality of IS information operations is in contrast to those of the international coalition.  David Kilcullen has noted that, in an age of global interconnectivity, this is something that needs to change in counterinsurgency.

IS' efforts to dominate perception are highlighted by recent tactics.  Its recent execution video, featuring Jihadi John's stand-in, highlights the way in which IS synchronises action and narrative.  IS claims the prisoners executed in the video were working for British intelligence.  This claim has been denied with the suggestion that they may in fact have been attempting to capture video of the real nature of life under IS control.  With perception as central to global jihadist strategy, IS is striving to dominate the information space.  This video, along with the recent assassinations of Syrian journalists attempting to document the reality of life in IS-controlled Raqqa, demonstrates two things.  The first is just how important the battle to dominate perception is for IS.  The second is the bravery of those reporting for sites like Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently.

Islamic State tries to hijack Australian Open hashtag

I'm currently working on a project for the Australian Army (along with my colleague Dr Waseem Afzal), which involves exploring agile responses to the dissemination of online extremist content.

In his recent speech in Washington Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull noted the need for agile information operations across social media by the Iraqi government in order to counter Islamic State (IS) propaganda and provide an alternative narrative around events in Iraq and Syria, for both global and regional audiences.  The US government is attempting to build consensus with Silicon Valley on potential counter-terrorism responses across social media.  We're exploring the development of innovative possibilities in this space.

IS's extensive use of Twitter has been documented (particularly by Berger and Morgan, 2015).  Studies (such as those of Berger and Morgan, 2015; Shaheen's 2015 study for NATO; Fisher 2015) using network analysis to investigate the structures employed to support IS information operations point to the self-repairing, decentralised networks that enable the persistent presence of IS propanganda online.

As I explore our data I'm finding similar patterns; multiple user accounts creating redundancy for quick repair in the network, "shout outs" to re-engage followers, hashtags as the focus of community/network formation.

I'm based in Australia so was aware that the Australian Open tennis tournament - one of world tennis' most prestigious events - began this week in Melbourne.  As I explored the subset of Islamic State Twitter accounts forming the data set for our project, I noticed that one account was attempting to hijack (amongst others) the Australian Open hashtag to distribute a military report.

The official Australian Open Twitter account uses #ausopen but #AustralianOpen is getting significant traction. What this highlights is the IS tactic of piggy-backing on both events of global interest and the social media communities (networked publics) that form around these events (such as the World Cup).  I've noticed this strategy being employed in our data set, with all sorts of incongruous pop culture hashtags being used to extend the reach of (often gruesome) IS media products.

IS creates media content for a range of different audiences (local, regional, global), with different strategic goals.  Instances of this tactic of co-opting high-profile event hashtags provide an indication of the content the IS aims to disseminate to global audiences.  This in turn helps us to understand what the group wishes to project, to amplify (eg in this instance, effective military capability).  This kind of analysis can offer insights that assist in degrading the capacity of IS information operations.

This is information

....according to Alan Moore - http://www.momentofmoore.com/day/2011/01/17

Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now | Video on TED.com

Anthropologist Amber Case talks here about humans and the use of tools. She notes that through history tools have been used as extensions of our physical capabilities however technology use now extends our mental capabilities, as well as allowing us to transcend some of the limitations of time and geographical space.

Visualisation and the network

Network analysis offers an important approach to internet research, enabling us to make sense of the complexity of online interactions.  Visualisations such as the one above act as representations of the large and complex datasets that the internet offers us as researchers.  For more on this impressive representation of the relationships connected together within facebook read the creator's comments here if you have a facebook account.

Google and the Digital Divide

Google and the Digital Divide

P.150 - "An army intelligence source argued that many attacks on British bases in Bara were based on aerial images in Google, claiming that documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents yeilded print-outs from Google Earth"

P.161 - "While some other states with ecomonic ties and market potential, such as India, can still negotiate for their control, other states, such as North Korea, Iran and some African countries, have, at least for the time being, less control over the representation of their spaces........This suggests that the 'open information society' is becoming a relative term, which is constantly shaped by a global network of political abd economic powers."

Google and the Digital Divide

Currently reviewing.......Google and the Digital Divide

Interesting array of digital research methods. P.127 - "network analysis has become an increasingly ueful method for studying the complexity of the global communication flow, and particularly the flow of news"