Frame your friends close and your enemies closer: how al-Masra newspaper imagines individuals

ABSTRACT

Armed groups are well-known for discussing their allies and adversaries in unitary actor terms. However, individuals also play an important part in the discourse of armed groups. Focusing on jihadist propaganda, we adopt a multi-method approach to examine the influence of individuals on militants’ diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing. We do so by analyzing original data collected from 1250 articles in al-Masra, an Arabic language newspaper linked to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Quantitatively, we record the number of articles in which numerous jihadist figures and leaders from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the United States were mentioned to measure their significance in al-Masra’s contents. Qualitatively, we explore al-Masra’s discourse surrounding these different individuals. Rather than only framing friends and foes in unitary actor terms, we find that individuals played a central role in al-Masra’s framing efforts. Yet, the extent to which al-Masra discussed different personalities varied across organizations as well as countries. These findings contribute to scholarship on individuals in conflict processes, armed group framing strategies, and jihadist propaganda.

KEYWORDS:

• al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula
• al-Masra
• jihadism
• framing
• individuals

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Emphasis added by the authors.

2 This paper utilizes the term AQAP to refer to both groups. As Elisabeth Kendall (2018, p. 6) states: ‘There is no doubt that Ansar al-Shari’a is one and the same as AQAP.’

3 For an analysis of the visual imagery surrounding leaders in jihadist propaganda, see Winkler et al. (2021).

4 All issues of al-Masra were retrieved at Aaron Zelin’s jihadology.net and stored in a secure Google Drive.

5 57 of these 58 issues were published between January 2016 and July 2017.

6 These articles come from all of al-Masra’s written contents aside from the short news blurbs found at the end of each edition of the newspaper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nihad Aboud

Nihad Aboud is a PhD candidate in Government at the University of Essex. Her research interests include conflict dynamics and terrorism, with a focus on militant strategies and behavior. She holds an MPP and MA in Comparative and International Studies.

Mark Berlin

Mark Berlin is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the George Washington University. His research analyzes armed group cooperation, extra-lethal violence, and Middle East politics. He holds graduate degrees from Georgetown University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sam Biasi

Sam Biasi is a PhD candidate in International Relations at Boston College. His research focuses on terrorism, political violence, and insurgent organizations. He holds a BA in Political Science from Clark University.

Tyler B. Parker

Tyler B. Parker is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Idaho. His research and teaching focuses on international relations and comparative politics in the Middle East. He received his PhD in Political Science from Boston College in 2023, and he holds a BA in Arabic and a MA in Islamic and Near Eastern Studies.