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The Islamic State has lost thousands of fighters to death or prison and suffered the demise of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. But the global reach of the group, also known as ISIS, is still vast, in part because of its sophisticated media output and the people around the world who consume it.<\/p>\n
On New Year\u2019s Day, a man with an Islamic State flag killed at least 14 people when he drove into a crowd in New Orleans. Authorities say there was no evidence that the man, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, had active connections to the terrorist group. But the F.B.I. said \u201che was 100 percent inspired by ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not yet clear which specific online content Mr. Jabbar may have seen or how else he may have been radicalized. Experts noted that the placement of the flag on the truck resembled one depicted by ISIS in a media campaign<\/a> urging followers to \u201crun them over without mercy.\u201d And, authorities said, he posted several videos to his Facebook account before his attack in which he pledged allegiance to ISIS.<\/p>\n From online videos to social media platforms \u2014 and even a weekly Islamic State newsletter \u2014 the group that wants to force all Muslims to adhere strictly to the faith\u2019s earliest teachings has a very modern media strategy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTerrorism is essentially communications,\u201d said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former United Nations diplomat who is the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, a think tank with offices in New York and Berlin. \u201cIt is not warfare, because obviously, ISIS cannot militarily defeat the West, right? They tried and it didn\u2019t exactly end well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n How did the Islamic State keep its influence alive? In part, by transforming its movement into a global franchise beyond the Middle East, with active chapters in Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Caucuses and Turkey, among other places.<\/p>\n But the glue that holds the disparate branches together \u2014 and also helps to inspire \u201clone wolf\u201d terrorists like Mr. Jabbar who carry out their own attacks \u2014 is the Islamic State\u2019s sophisticated media operation. Experts say that while it is doubtful that the media operation has a physical headquarters, it is highly centralized and controlled by its media directorate. Much of its output appears to come from affiliates in Africa, which have recently been the most active in terms of attacks..<\/p>\n The group also puts out an online weekly newsletter called Al Naba, or The News, which contains details of the group\u2019s latest exploits, implicitly encouraging followers to commit acts of violence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe Al Naba newsletter comes out like clockwork every Thursday, which is one of the more impressive things that the group is able to do,\u201d said Cole Bunzel, a scholar of militant Islam in the Middle East at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have an editorial; they cover the different provinces, as they\u2019re called; they cover attacks from that week. They tally up the number of attacks and casualties that they claim. And that\u2019s the main way that they stay connected with their global support base,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The most recent edition of the newsletter, published on Jan. 2, did not mention the New Orleans attack, and the Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for it.<\/p>\n Al Naba was initially published through the messaging app Telegram and other platforms, constantly adapting as different channels were shut down, said Aaron Zelin, a Washington Institute fellow who has tracked the activities and propaganda of Islamist groups for more than 15 years.<\/p>\n Supporters of the group have also disseminated messages on Twitter, Facebook pages and other social media platforms, according to researchers. When their user profiles are blocked, they often just create new ones. T he Islamic State has used decentralized internet tools that are harder to shut down and moved some of its messaging to the dark web, Mr. Zelin said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Terrorism analysts say that it has been easy for extremists to connect with potential supporters on social media because of the lack of effort both by some of the companies that operate the platforms and by governments to force a crackdown.<\/p>\n Mr. Schindler said that in light of the New Orleans attack both political parties should ask: \u201cWhy is this massive industry with these profits not helping our security services to prevent such attacks? Why do we not get a tip, as we do from the banks and every financial institution in North America and worldwide, that there is a terrorist here, or a tip that there\u2019s a radicalization process going on?\u201d<\/p>\n Terrorism experts say the Islamic State\u2019s mastery of media and message is a key to its success. Al Qaeda, which the Islamic State split from in 2013, laid the groundwork, publishing both online and print magazines and producing videos as well as social media.<\/p>\n In January, 2024, the extremist group revived a campaign directed at its global adherents: \u201ckill them wherever you find them<\/a>,\u201d a reference to a verse in the Quran.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The idea, which first surfaced in 2015, was to encourage would-be followers to commit acts of jihad at home rather than traveling to Iraq and Syria. That notion became even more important once the caliphate was defeated.<\/p>\n During the period when the Islamic State held ground in Syria and then Iraq (2013-2017) and was eager to gain adherents in the West, it was notorious for posting grisly depictions of violence, such as the beheading of the photojournalist James Wright Foley.<\/p>\n Now, experts say an increasingly daunting challenge is that social media platforms are doing much of the work of spreading the Islamic State\u2019s message, as algorithms that seek to boost engagement take some users deeper and deeper into the extremist worldview.<\/p>\n \u201cTerror groups don\u2019t have to make a ton of effort to radicalize people anymore; the algorithm does it for them,\u201d Mr. Schindler said. \u201cThe point of the algorithm is to keep the user on the platform, to give them what they like, and if this happens to be Islamic extremism or if you are in the radicalization process, your worldview shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Syria, where the Islamic State took advantage of a long civil war to seize a large swath of territory, only to lose it eventually to U.S.-backed fighters, the group has begun to rebound, accelerating its attacks. That trend might continue, because the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was suddenly toppled in December by another extremist group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, which was once associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.<\/p>\nA terrorist newsletter<\/h2>\n
\u2018Kill them wherever you find them\u2019<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n