Image Warfare in the War on Terror

Die Rolle des Internets im Radikalisierungsprozess einer jihadistischen Straftäterin – eine Einzelfallstudie

“…Zugleich versuchte sie einen Prozess der Dehumanisierung zu erzeugen, der dazu beitragen sollte, dass bei den Betrachtenden die Hemmschwelle zur Gewaltanwendung sinkt. Fatma beabsichtigte mit ihrem image warfare (Roger 2013) eine emotionale sowie kognitive Distanz zwischen Publikum und dem Aggressor bzw. der anzugreifenden Zielgruppe herzustellen, um die psychologischen Barrieren zur Anwendung von politischer Gewalt oder Terror zu beseitigen (Borum 2011, S. 29;Bötticher und Mares 2012, S. 188-189).…”

ISIS’s media strategy as image warfare: Strategic messaging over time and across platforms

“…The first factor is the level of disparity between the actors taking part in the conflict-the shift toward asymmetric conflicts in which states fight against non-state actors (Lind, 2004). The second is the amount of attention the conflicts receive via the media (traditional and new media); we receive news from around the world in general, and news about conflicts in particular, extensively and in real time (Betz, 2008;Douglas, 2007;Roger, 2013). This reality has affected the political actors involved in those conflicts, including terror organizations (Yarchi, 2016).…”

“…Since its Caliphate Declaration in the summer of 2014, the group has used "state-of-the-art videos, ground images shot from drones and multilingual Twitter messages" (Shane & Hubbard, 2014), and continuously uses different social media platforms to maximize the dissemination of its messages (Schmitt, 2015). In this article the concept of Image Warfare (Roger, 2013) is used to analyze ISIS's media strategy across different platforms, over time and to different target audiences, addressing the importance of the media to ISIS's military and political operations.…”

Terrorism Online

“…News stations and terrorist websites were quick to broadcast the grisly images captured of the slain soldier and the blood-stained suspects (McGarry, 2014). It has been argued that the fact that a beheading can be recorded and shared via the Internet might be the very reason it takes place (Roger, 2013). In other words, the possibility of disseminating recordings of such acts online is influencing the types of violence terrorist groups choose to commit.…”