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Mapping the online presence and activities of the Islamic State’s unofficial propaganda cell: Ahlut-Tawhid Publications

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Abstract

This paper, which takes the form of a case study, aims to contribute to the debate on activities of the Islamic State’s unofficial media bureaus. Based on tools of open source intelligence, as well as a limited content analysis, it maps the online presence and activities of Ahlut-Tawhid Publications (AHP). Its means of distributing pro-Daesh content in the surface web as well as its general impact are discussed. It also deliberates on the interconnectedness of AHP with other online propaganda cells supporting the self-proclaimed “Caliphate.” This paper argues that this group was part of the ongoing online campaign of the Islamic State in the World Wide Web in 2018 and 2019. It maintained quite an impressive and long-lasting online presence, combining the potential of the most popular microblogs, hosting services and social media with the flexibility of standalone websites. In contrast to the most recognized propaganda cells of Daesh, such as al-Hayat Media Centre or Amaq News Agency whose productions have been quickly detected and removed from the mainstream webpages for years, AHP kept a low profile for the most part of 2018. In effect, it benefited from its relative anonymity and for months operated a network of pro-IS distribution channels throughout Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 environments. This ceased to be the case in 2019, when most of them were incapacitated (banned) by law enforcement or abandoned. It is clear that the attention given to proliferating propaganda through the surface web decreased at this time, probably in favor of the Telegram communication software, as the discovered statistics suggest. The only active (still updated) locations—partially related to Ahlut-Tawhid Publications—belonged to the Bengali Ansar network. It has to be stressed, however, that AHP failed to spark increased attention of Internet users.

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Notes

  1. Ahlut-Tawhid Publications was labeled by the TRAC Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium as an unofficial Islamic State entity in February 2018 (TrackingTerrorism 2018).

  2. The author follows the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s definition of OSINT, which states that it is “intelligence produced from publicly available information that is collected, exploited, and disseminated in a timely manner to an appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing a specific intelligence requirement.” (Williams and Blum 2018).

  3. In this context, it is surprising to note that in recent years there has been little academic interest in exploring the usability of open source intelligence as a research tool in analyzing the digital presence of terrorist organizations. Obviously, the very theme of OSINT techniques has been frequently discussed in academia (Williams and Blum 2018; Trottier 2015; Tabatabaei and Wells 2016; Bazzell 2016), but there are very few up-to-date papers (Dawson et al. 2018; de Smedt et al. 2018; Condon and Weyers 2019), which attempt to outline how these tools can be used to detect and curb terrorist activities in cyberspace, which are—in fact—qualitatively different from other criminal activities in cyberspace. In effect they sometimes require a different set of methods, combined with a broad knowledge on the specificity of terrorist ideology.

  4. It was impossible to extract additional information on the background of the website, including the details of the registrar (via who.is), which were anonymized.

  5. However, it proved to be a real, valid address.

  6. This identity could be, however, fake.

  7. Usernames could constitute, in fact, fake accounts based on counterfeit personal data.

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  1. University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland

    Miron Lakomy

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  1. Miron Lakomy
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Correspondence to Miron Lakomy.

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Lakomy, M. Mapping the online presence and activities of the Islamic State’s unofficial propaganda cell: Ahlut-Tawhid Publications. Secur J 34, 358–384 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41284-020-00229-3

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