inss.dodlive.mil DH No. 77 1
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n June 29, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, also
known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or the Islamic
State),
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a Sunni jihadist group with the capability of a paramilitary,
established an Islamic caliphate. With 10,000 militants, the group took territory
and achieved a goal that rival terrorist group al Qaeda has pursued for decades.
Yet how did a group with relatively few ghters accomplish so much?
ISIS and its caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have learned lessons from past
insurgents and leaders. In the implementation of its campaign, the group has
used strategic tools to project military, economic, political, and informational
power to the local, regional, and global community. From exploiting the sectar-
ian divide to gain support, to manipulating political and social media to inate
its appearance of strength, to recruiting disaected Sunnis and Muslim youth of
the world through social media, ISIS has proved to be a new class of insurgency.
ISIS, however, has projected the most power and shown the most innova-
tion with technology and media. It demonstrates a masterful understanding of
eective propaganda and social media use, producing a multidimensional global
campaign across multiple platforms. ISIS has used these platforms to exhibit
intimidation, networking, recruitment, justice, and justication. It continues to
spread its anti-Western, pro-jihadi messages to vulnerable populations using vi-
ral videos made to look like video games. Yet its skill is best displayed on Twitter
where it has garnered tens of thousands of followers across dozens of accounts,
eliciting feedback from average supporters.
e deterioration of the Syrian and Iraqi states further enabled ISIS’s ex-
pansion of power. With the civil war in Syria and the inamed sectarian tensions
A Time to Tweet, as Well
as a Time to Kill: ISIS’s
Projection of Power in Iraq
and Syria
by Heather Marie Vitale and James M. Keagle
Defense Horizons
National Defense University
CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
About the Authors
Heather Marie Vitale is an
International Security graduate
student at George Mason University
and a Research Intern at the National
Defense University (NDU). Dr. James
M. Keagle is Deputy Director of the
Center for Technology and National
Security Policy, Institute for National
Strategic Studies, at NDU. He is also a
Professor and former Provost at NDU.
Key Points
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-
Sham (ISIS) uses a combination
of intimidation, military might,
and digital propaganda to project
power militarily, economically,
politically, and informationally.
ISIS runs a sophisticated and mul-
tidimensional social media cam-
paign, exploiting it as a weapon of
war to intimidate, spread ofcial
messages, recruit, fundraise,
network, and justify its gruesome
acts.
ISIS has been emboldened by the
borderless nature of the region
and the clash of religious and secu-
lar sub-identities in Iraq.
The United States needs to
develop a comprehensive digital
strategy that is slicker, faster, and
more nimble than ISIS’s to ght
the insurgency.
October 2014
