Intersections of the Real and the Virtual Caliphates: The Islamic State's Territory and Media Campaign

In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) emerged as one of the most prominent global security threats after securing large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq. By 2018, it has lost nearly all of its territory to the various military forces allied against it. ISIS's territorial expansion correlated with the group's online propaganda activities. With the established contribution of online media efforts to ISIS recruitment and fundraising, isolating factors that correspond to changes in the group's media output takes on added importance. The following study, designed to track ISIS's territorial expansions and contractions from July 2014 to September 2018 against the group's visual output levels and content, seeks to resolve such disputes by both expanding the period of analysis and deconflating land acquisition from other possible variables of analysis. Specifically, the study explores the relationship between territorial control and the visual imagery in ISIS's two English-language online magazines, Dabiqand Rumiyah, across all published issues from July 2014 until September 2017. It also examines any territorial links to the visual imagery in al-Naba’, the group's Arabic-language newsletter, from December 2015 until September 2018. We find that territorial control is significantly associated with changes in the number of images for all publications. Furthermore, we observe an overall trend from military to state-building imagery as territorial losses occur. Thus, territorial changes appeared to influence ISIS's messaging as the group tried to reassure its readers of its continued state presence through a shift toward state-building imagery.