---
title: The Islamic State's media machine:Dabiq, Rumiyah, Amaq and the 'virtual caliphate'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/
description: between 2014 and 2019 the Islamic State ran a state-style media system that told outsiders it was a working, godly state, told Muslims there was no…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a dossier collage of a vintage television wall broadcasting archival news footage, surrounded by press clippings and film reels.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-watch-briefs.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# The Islamic State's media machine:Dabiq, Rumiyah, Amaq and the 'virtual caliphate'

At a glance

Between 2014 and 2019 the Islamic State ran a state-style media system that told outsiders it was a working, godly state, told Muslims there was no middle ground left, and told its enemies what it would do to them…

- **When:** July 2014
- **Actor:** Islamic State central media…
- **Target:** Western and other non-Arabic-speaking Muslims as potential recruits…
- **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Islamic State central media (al-Hayat Media Center, provincial media offices, Amaq, Nashir), with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire (2010 onward) as the forerunner
- **Target:** Western and other non-Arabic-speaking Muslims as potential recruits; Arabic-speaking populations living under or near its rule; enemy governments and publics as targets of intimidation

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#how-it-works)
- [How it was countered](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#how-it-was-countered)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/islamic-state-media-dabiq/#sources)

On this page

> **Content note.** This page describes a media operation that published killings of hostages and prisoners as videos, and quotes a few of its labels for Muslims and non-Muslims who opposed it. No content from the group is hosted or linked here; the page cites research about it.

**In one line:** between 2014 and 2019 the Islamic State ran a state-style media system that told outsiders it was a working, godly state, told Muslims there was no middle ground left, and told its enemies what it would do to them; researchers counted its output rising to hundreds of products a month and then collapsing as it lost territory, media officials and online distribution.

![Diagram: from Inspire's English-language model to al-Hayat and the provincial offices; a message mix led by "utopia" content; distribution by Twitter, then Telegram, Amaq and media operatives; then output collapse under strikes, territorial loss and takedowns](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/islamic-state-media-dabiq-diagram.svg)

## What happened

- **July 2010: the model.** Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) releases the first issue of *Inspire*, an English-language online magazine. PBS Frontline reports that it was created by Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen, and associated with the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and that it aimed at English-speaking Muslims in the West. Its "open source jihad" theme urged individuals to act alone. *Inspire* published attack instructions; U.S. prosecutors said the Boston Marathon bombers had a copy. Awlaki and Khan were killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on 30 September 2011.
- **2014: the Islamic State's own system.** The group sets up al-Hayat Media Center for non-Arabic audiences. On 5 July 2014 al-Hayat publishes the first issue of *Dabiq*, titled "The Return of Khilafah". *Dabiq* runs for fifteen issues until mid-2016. Alongside it, provincial ("wilayat") media offices issue photo reports and videos from each area the group holds.
- **August 2014 onward: execution videos as a genre.** Al-Hayat's hostage-killing videos, starting with the killing of U.S. journalist James Foley, become the output most outsiders knew. A 2019 study by Herfroy-Mischler and Barr coded 62 execution videos from the group's first year and analysed their visual, verbal and sound design for different audiences.
- **Late 2014: the distribution layer.** J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan's Brookings census (March 2015) estimates that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by the group's supporters in October and November 2014.
- **Summer 2015: the peak.** Charlie Winter's Quilliam study archives 1,146 separate official propaganda "events" in one lunar month (17 July to 15 August 2015). Of these, 52.57% depicted civilian life in the "caliphate", 37.12% were military, and 2.13% focused on brutality. Aaron Zelin's one-week snapshot for *Perspectives on Terrorism* (August 2015) reaches the same shape: military affairs, governance, preaching and moral policing dwarf execution videos.
- **2016-2017: the "media mujahid".** Winter's ICSR report *Media Jihad* (2017) analyses an Islamic State booklet, *Media Operative, You Are a Mujahid, Too*, which treats "information jihad" as equal in importance to fighting and calls the mainstream media a "media weapon". Amaq, styled as a news agency, issues the group's attack claims; as Twitter suspends accounts, supporters move to Telegram channels.
- **September 2016 to 2017: Rumiyah.** *Rumiyah* ("Rome") replaces *Dabiq* in several languages. The town of Dabiq, named in an end-times hadith that gave the first magazine its title, falls to Turkish-backed forces in October 2016. Haroro Ingram's ICCT study reads the English-language magazines from June 2014 to September 2017 as the group's main channel to Muslims in the West.
- **2016-2019: collapse.** Daniel Milton's CTC West Point report *Communication Breakdown* (October 2016) examines over 9,000 official products and finds monthly visual releases fell from 761 in August 2015 to 194 in August 2016. Later takedowns of Amaq and Nashir infrastructure (2018, 2019) cut further into distribution.

## How it works

- [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/): the dominant category of output was what Winter called "utopia": markets, harvests, schools, policing and worship, filed under the word "Khilafah". "The Return of Khilafah" on the first *Dabiq* cover is a virtue word standing in for a claim about governance that outsiders could not check. Winter's figure (more than half of official output in summer 2015) shows the pitch was mostly this, not violence.
- [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/): *Dabiq* issue 7 (February 2015) ran a feature, "The Extinction of the Grayzone". MEMRI's summary states its thesis: the world is divided into two camps, the Islamic State's and its enemies', with no space between. Muslims who reject the group are placed in the enemy camp. Questioning the group becomes, in the group's frame, leaving Islam.
- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) and [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): Ingram describes the magazines' "competitive system of meaning": the group presented itself as the champion of Sunni Muslims, its enemies as the evil Others responsible for Sunni crisis, and itself as the only solution. Labels such as "crusaders" for Western states and "apostates" for Muslim opponents sort people into that frame before any argument is made.
- [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): two directions. To Muslims in the West, *Dabiq* said they faced persecution by "crusader governments and citizens" and offered one exit: emigration (*hijrah*) to the group's territory. To enemies and local populations, the execution videos staged imminent harm; the Foley video framed the killing as a reply to U.S. air strikes.
- [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): the group borrowed religious authority. A 2019 *Studies in Conflict & Terrorism* article shows how its propaganda used hadith quotation to assert legitimacy, and both magazine titles, *Dabiq* and *Rumiyah*, are drawn from prophetic traditions about end-times battles and the conquest of Rome.
- [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/): the *Media Operative* booklet treated mainstream news coverage as a weapon to be used. The execution videos were built so that the fury of enemy publics would carry them onto front pages and broadcasts far beyond the group's own channels.
- **Audience and spread.** Research separates three audiences. English, French, German and other editions of *Dabiq* and *Rumiyah* aimed at potential recruits abroad, following *Inspire*'s lead. Arabic output from the provincial offices spoke to people under or near the group's rule, mixing services with punishments. Enemy governments and publics received the killing videos. Distribution moved from Twitter swarms (Brookings) to Telegram channels and bots, with Amaq and Nashir as branded relays and "media operatives" posting, re-uploading and translating.

## How it was countered

- **Platforms and hash-sharing.** Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism in June 2017. Its shared database of digital fingerprints ("hashes") of removed terrorist images and videos held more than 40,000 hashes by December 2017, according to the companies.
- **Europol takedowns.** On 25 April 2018, led by Belgium's Federal Prosecutor and coordinated by Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit, authorities in eight countries hit Amaq, al-Bayan radio, Halumu and Nashir, seizing servers in the Netherlands, Canada and the United States. On 21-22 November 2019 a Referral Action Day with Telegram, Google, Twitter and Instagram removed about 26,000 items. A 2020 GNET assessment found this was a real but temporary blow: a "stubborn remnant" stayed on Telegram, and supporters dispersed to a dozen-plus other platforms.
- **Military strikes on media officials.** The Pentagon announced on 16 September 2016 that a strike near Raqqa on 7 September had killed Wa'il al-Fayad, whom it called the group's "minister of information" and said had overseen execution videos. The 2011 strike on Awlaki and Khan, both U.S. citizens, was challenged by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights as a killing without due process; a federal court dismissed the families' case in April 2014.
- **Territory.** Milton's report links the fall in output to the military pressure on the group, which cost it territory, media staff and production sites.
- **Government counter-messaging.** The State Department's "Think Again Turn Away" (from December 2013), a government counter-propaganda campaign, argued with supporters on Twitter and, as VOA reported, recut the group's own graphic footage into warnings, a fear appeal of its own. Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence called it "embarrassing" and ineffective in *Time* (2014), and argued it gave the group's supporters a stage. The Global Coalition set up a Coalition Communications Cell in London and the Sawab Center in Abu Dhabi to counter the group's messaging.
- **Religious rebuttals.** On 19 September 2014 more than 120 Muslim scholars (126 in the final count) released an Open Letter to al-Baghdadi, a point-by-point refutation from Qur'an, hadith and classical jurisprudence. It told him: "You have misinterpreted Islam into a religion of harshness, brutality, torture and murder."
- **Costs.** The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Syrian Archive documented that automated removal tools adopted from 2017 also deleted hundreds of thousands of videos by Syrian activists, including evidence of war crimes. The GNET assessment also records displacement: pressure dispersed supporters across many smaller platforms rather than removing them.

![Defeat-ISIS ministerial meeting, Munich, February 2019](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/defeat-isis-ministerial-munich-2019.jpg)

*German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen and acting U.S. defence secretary Patrick Shanahan at a meeting of defeat-ISIS coalition defence ministers, Munich, 15 February 2019. U.S. Department of Defense photo by Lisa Ferdinando, public domain. Shown for the state side of the counter-campaign described above.*

## Then and now

**Content note:** Dehumanizing caricature of Germans as an ape, implied sexual violence and partial nudity. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Destroy This Mad Brute (1917)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917.jpg)

*[Destroy This Mad Brute — Enlist](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917/), U.S. Army recruitment poster by Harry Ryle Hopps, 1917. Public domain.*

The 1917 U.S. Army poster and the Islamic State's recruitment material share a structure: an enemy is shown as a threat to the viewer's own people, and the answer offered is to join up. The poster used a caricature and a word, "Kultur", borrowed from the enemy's culture; *Dabiq* used "crusaders" and quoted scripture. The differences are large. The poster was a state's call to enlist in a declared war under national law. The Islamic State recruited across borders for a group that published killings of captives as a media product. The poster was one printed image; the 2015 output ran to hundreds of videos, photo sets and other products a month. What the two share is the method, not the cause or the scale.

## Positions on the record

- **The movement's stated position:** *Dabiq* presented the group as a restored caliphate that all Muslims were obliged to support, and said the world had split into two camps with no "grayzone".
- **What is documented:** the outlets, formats and dates above; Winter's, Zelin's and Milton's counts; the 2018 and 2019 takedowns; the strikes on media officials; the Open Letter.
- **What is contested or not shown:** how many people joined or attacked because of the media, as opposed to personal networks and local conditions. Winter's and Zelin's counts also cut against the common picture of the output as mainly killing videos. How much Western news coverage amplified the killing videos, and whether counter-messaging changed anyone's decision, has not been measured in a way the sources settle.

## Same-method test

A movement of any other ideology that ran branded recruitment video, framed one people as under siege, and offered joining as the only escape would be scored the same way here. There is a documented parallel. A 2020 GNET study by researchers of both jihadist and far-right extremism scored eighteen videos by the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division with a tool built to rate Islamic State video quality. All scored under half of the Islamic State's production quality, and the authors concluded Atomwaffen relied on internet aesthetics rather than polish. The technique ids apply to both. The production budgets did not match.

## How to spot it

- Count the categories. If most of a group's output is pastoral scenes of order and plenty, ask who could check them and what the camera was not shown.
- Notice when a message says there is no middle ground. That claim is aimed at the undecided, not at enemies.
- A "news agency" that is always first with a claim and never reports anything against the group is a relay, not a newsroom.
- When a video is built to horrify, sharing it, even in anger, is the distribution its makers planned.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the sources below (`make_diagrams_extremist.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| Defeat-ISIS ministerial, Munich (2019) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Coalition_to_Defeat_ISIS_Ministerial_(46187245935).jpg) | Public domain (U.S. Department of Defense) |
| *Destroy This Mad Brute* (1917) | FRAME gallery, from Wikimedia Commons (Library of Congress) | Public domain |

### Image gaps

- **Magazine covers, video frames and Amaq graphics.** Not included: the group's media is its own copyrighted recruitment product, and some of it shows killings. Research reports describe and cite it instead.
- **Photographs of the takedowns themselves.** No openly licensed photograph of the 2018 or 2019 Europol action days or of the al-Fayad strike was found; a U.S. Department of Defense photo of a 2019 coalition ministerial is used above instead.
- **A photograph of the Open Letter's release in Washington, September 2014.** Could be added if an openly licensed press photo exists; none was checked for this page. **This gap can be filled.**

## Sources

- [PBS Frontline: The magazine that inspired the Boston bombers](https://pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-magazine-that-inspired-the-boston-bombers/)
- [ACLU: Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta, constitutional challenge to killing of three U.S. citizens](https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutional-challenge-killing-three-us-citizens)
- [Brookings, March 2015: J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan, The ISIS Twitter census](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-isis-twitter-census-defining-and-describing-the-population-of-isis-supporters-on-twitter/)
- [Quilliam, 2015: Charlie Winter, Documenting the Virtual "Caliphate"](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6059d8709ae2c962e9a510db/t/60af681cdf931e6916cbc180/1622108192930/FINAL-documenting-the-virtual-caliphate.pdf)
- [Perspectives on Terrorism, August 2015: Aaron Y. Zelin, Picture or It Didn't Happen](https://pt.icct.nl/article/picture-or-it-didnt-happen-snapshot-islamic-states-official-media-output)
- [MEMRI, 2015: Dabiq VII feature article, the world includes only two camps](https://www.memri.org/jttm/dabiq-vii-feature-article-world-includes-only-two-camps-%E2%80%93-isis-and-its-enemies)
- [ICSR, 2017: Charlie Winter, Media Jihad: The Islamic State's Doctrine for Information Warfare](https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ICSR-Report-Media-Jihad-The-Islamic-State%E2%80%99s-Doctrine-for-Information-Warfare.pdf)
- [CTC West Point, October 2016: Daniel Milton, Communication Breakdown](https://ctc.westpoint.edu/communication-breakdown-unraveling-the-islamic-states-media-efforts/)
- [ICCT, 2018: Haroro J. Ingram, Islamic State's English-language Magazines, 2014-2017](https://icct.nl/publication/islamic-states-english-language-magazines-2014-2017-trends-implications-ct-cve)
- [Studies in Conflict & Terrorism: Exploiting the Prophet's Authority: How Islamic State Propaganda Uses Hadith Quotation to Assert Legitimacy](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1431363)
- [Social Semiotics / SAGE, 2019: Herfroy-Mischler and Barr, Jihadist visual communication strategy: ISIL's hostage executions video production](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470357218803396)
- [Washington Post, 16 September 2016: Pentagon says Raqqa strike kills Islamic State information minister](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/09/16/u-s-strike-kills-another-senior-islamic-state-militant-official-says/)
- [Microsoft, 4 December 2017: update on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/12/04/facebook-microsoft-twitter-and-youtube-provide-update-on-global-internet-forum-to-counter-terrorism/)
- [Europol, April 2018: Islamic State propaganda machine hit by law enforcement in coordinated takedown action](https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/islamic-state-propaganda-machine-hit-law-enforcement-in-coordinated-takedown-action)
- [GNET, 30 July 2020: Telegram's anti-IS campaign: effectiveness, perspectives, and policy suggestions](https://gnet-research.org/2020/07/30/telegrams-anti-is-campaign-effectiveness-perspectives-and-policy-suggestions/)
- [VOA, 2014: State Dept. uses IS propaganda to fight militants](https://www.voanews.com/a/state-department-recasts-brutal-videos-dissuade-jihadists/2437465.html)
- [Time, 2014: Rita Katz, Think Again Turn Away: the State Department is fumbling online](https://time.com/3387065/isis-twitter-war-state-department/)
- [Global Coalition Against Daesh: Countering Daesh's propaganda](https://theglobalcoalition.org/en/mission/countering-daeshs-propaganda/)
- [VOA / Reuters, September 2014: Muslim scholars present religious rebuttal to Islamic State](https://www.voanews.com/a/reu-muslim-scholars-rebuttal-islamic-state/2463725.html)
- [Electronic Frontier Foundation: Documentation of war crimes disappeared by automated tools](https://www.eff.org/tossedout/documentation-war-crimes-disappeared-automated-tools)
- [GNET, 23 July 2020: Plug-and-play propaganda: production quality in Atomwaffen Division videos](https://gnet-research.org/2020/07/23/plug-and-play-propaganda-understanding-production-quality-in-atomwaffen-division-videos/)