ISIS’ effectiveness at using the Internet to spread terror and attract foreign recruits is now well documented.

The terrorist group has taken psychological warfare to dimensions Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would have admired. In-depth analysis of ISIS propaganda is a necessity for understanding how to combat violent Islamic extremism online.

A program at The Heritage Foundation last week delivered some of that analysis. “Cyberspace & Terrorism: The Islamic State and the Lone Wolf,” featured Daniel Cohen of the Cyber Security Program of the Israel-based Institute for National Security Studies and was led The Heritage Foundation’s Steve Bucci.

As Cohen explained, ISIS identifies its own strategy as stage A: Islamic State in Syria and Iraq; stage B: regional expansion throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, including the Iberian Peninsula; and stage 3: global expansion through the export of terrorism.

As much as international attention as ISIS has grabbed, it is important to remember the current campaign goes back less than a year. Its Internet presence began in April and May, and it was only in June that the group, known before as “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” declared the Islamic State. And it was only in August that the horrific videos began to appear.
ISIS’ media operation is as sophisticated as its actions are barbaric. Recruitment videos are tailored to audiences in as many as 14 different languages, and some feature Western recruits. A propaganda shot shows a laptop and a handgun lying next to a bag of M&Ms.

The message to disaffected youth in the West: We are just like you. In one video, a young Canadian talks about joining up to fight, only to be killed in battle, basically sacrificed to make the production complete.

Some ISIS videos feature kids, families, shops, praying—suggesting life goes on as normal in the Islamic State. It works, Cohen said. Positive comments found on the Internet concerning ISIS are not negligible. Even from the U.S., 21.4 percent of comments were positive.

ISIS deploys a range of social media tools: videos, community forums, publications, gaming, social media, even merchandising. Through these means, it projects an outsized image of being in the millions when, in fact, only about 50,000 belong to ISIS.

The group does hold sizable tracts of land—about a third each of Iraq and Syria, an area with 8 million people.

The biggest problem with these videos, Cohen said, is they are said to inspire ‘lone wolf” attacks in countries from Canada to the U.S. to Australia. The common denominator in all of them is the attacker spent hours upon hours every day on ISIS propaganda videos and social media websites.

More than anything, said Cohen, we need to change the narrative online, show the reality of ISIS and expose life in the Islamic State for what it is. It is also worth recalling that the United States controls 80 percent of the Internet servers in the world. What we need is a comprehensive counter-propaganda strategy, every bit as sophisticated as that of the enemy.