Under the shade of AK47s: a multimodal approach to violent extremist recruitment strategies for foreign fighters

ABSTRACT

Two notable features of the current conflict in Syria and Iraq are the number of foreign fighters from western countries fighting for Sunni militant organisations, and the use of the Internet and social media by some extremist groups to disseminate propaganda material. This article explores how the group which refers to itself as Islamic State and an affiliated British group, Rayat al Tawheed, deploy combinations of images and text which serve as bonding icons to rally supporters. The data consists of the English language edition of ISIS’s online magazine Dabiq and online materials produced by Rayat al Tawheed. The results suggest that ISIS and Rayat al Tawheed adopt similar but different iconisation strategies. While ISIS adopts a global strategy to present a unified world view utilising a range of ISIS values in its iconisation, Rayat al Tawheed foregrounds jihad using strategies specifically targeting young, English-speaking men of Islamic/Arab backgrounds.

KEYWORDS:

• Bonding icons
• Islamic state
• Dabiq
• Rayat al Tawheed
• multimodal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 73. Available at: http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/052-sbt.php.

2. http://r-tawheed.tumblr.com/.

3. The Islamic State’s (ISIS, ISIL) Magazine. Available at: http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq.

4. AP Photo/Monica Prieto. Available at: http://www.vosizneias.com/129441/2013/04/26/damascus-syria-syrian-officials-deny-use-of-chemical-weapons/.

5. Photo by Medyan Dairieh/Vice News. Available at: https://news.vice.com/topic/regiment-121.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Wignell

Peter Wignell is a research fellow in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, at Curtin University. Peter’s current research interests are in Systemic Functional Linguistics, especially in its application to the analysis of multimodal texts. His research has also focused on the role of language in the construction of specialised knowledge. Email: [email protected].

Sabine Tan

Sabine Tan is a research fellow in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. Her research interests include critical multimodal discourse analysis, social semiotics and visual communication. She is particularly interested in the application of multidisciplinary perspectives within social semiotic theory to the analysis of institutional discourses involving traditional and new media. Email: [email protected].

Kay L. O’Halloran

Kay L. O’Halloran is Professor in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, at Curtin University. Her areas of research include multimodal analysis, social semiotics, mathematics discourse, and the development of interactive digital media technologies and visualization techniques for multimodal and sociocultural analytics. Email: [email protected].