Marketing Jihad: the rhetoric of recruitment

ABSTRACT

The key question from a marketing perspective is why has Islamic State (IS) been so successful and how did it displace Al Qaeda (AQ) as the most prominent brand of global jihad from 2014 to 2016? The political and military elements have been examined but comparatively little attention has been paid to the ability of IS to commandeer the AQ narrative by appropriating and extending key themes and using them via social media to market itself as a choice for disaffected youth. It is suggested that IS has done this by making skilful use of rhetoric to position its brand and facilitate recruitment. To illustrate this, eight major themes of jihadi social media communications are identified and then analysed. Then a comparison is made between the way that AQ has used these themes in the online journal Inspire and the way that IS has used them in their online journals, Dabiq and Rumiyah.

KEYWORDS:

• Marketing
• jihad
• rhetoric
• recruitment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Shaw

Michael Shaw has lectured in Multimedia and Design at Monash and Marketing at RMIT.

Priyantha Bandara

Priyantha Bandera has lectured in Marketing at Kent Institute.