Rocco Giurato - Governare Lepidemia: Società, Istituzioni E Sicurezza Pubblica

Matteo Vergani, Ana-Maria Bliuc

Claudio Bertolotti, Andrea Beccaro

Laris Gaiser

Giovanni Giacalone

Marco Lombardi, Alessandro Burato, Marco Maiolino

Alessandro Burato

Mauro Pastorello

Giovanni Pisapia

Matteo Vergani

In this article we investigate the evolution of ISIS by analysing the text contained in Dabiq, the official ISIS internet magazine in English. Specifically, we used a computerized text analysis pro-gram LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) to investigate the evolution of the language of the first 11 Issues of Dabiq. First, our analysis showed that affiliation seems to be an increasingly important psychological motive for the group. Secondly, ISIS has been increasingly using emotions, which are an important mobilizing factor in collective action literature, in a strategic manner. Thirdly, ISIS language presents an increasing concern with females. Last but not least, our analysis shows that ISIS has been increasingly using internet jargon (net-speak), which shows how the group tries to adapt itself to the internet environment and to connect with the identities of young individuals.

ISIS is of particular concern as it seems to be more successful at recruiting foreign fighters than other jihadist groups (such as al-Qaeda). This aspect is difficult to quantify because reliable it is hard to access data about the exact number, demographics and affiliation of the foreign fighters who joined those organizations. Yet according to reports by the European Union there is a concerning increase in recruitment rates and patterns, with ISIS being more successful at recruiting young individuals from Western countries than any other jihadist group (Archick, Belkin, Blanchard, Hemud, & Mix, 2015). Scholars suggested that the majority of newly recruited jihadists prefer ISIS to other jihadist groups (Karmon, 2015; Klausen, 2015; Peresin, 2015; Peresin & Cervone, 2015; Turner, 2015)and journalists reported that existing members of al-Qaeda even abandoned the group to join ISIS (Dilanian, 2015; Miller, 2014). Moreover, a 2015 report from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence based at London Kings College stated that the number of jihadist foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq from 2011 to 2014 has surpassed the total number of jihadists who went fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviets, when al-Qaeda emerged.

ISIS seems also particularly able to connect with Western foreign fighters, and more in general the conflict in Syria and Iraq has been attracting relevant numbers of foreign fighters from the EU, the US and Australia: according to the Kings College report Western jihadists in Syria and Iraq are about 4,000. This may be explained by many factors among which the ease to reach the conflict zone, the expected good living conditions (which appear from the images that circulate in the social media of glamour jihadists eating Nutella, using new technologies and posting tourist-like pictures), the desire for adventure, and other factors (Klausen, 2015; Peresin & Cervone, 2015). News reports announced the birth of a unit, the Anwar al-Awlaki Battalion.

We argue that part of ISIS success can be investigated by examining the psychological aspects of the group, which can be researched by looking at the structures of the language. In this article we would like to address the following question: has ISIS language evolved since its declaration on June 29, 2014?

We decided to investigate our research question using a rich source of data: the text contained in Dabiq, the official ISIS internet magazine in English. Dabiq is in fact one of the few original sources of data that directly comes from ISIS. Specifically, we used a computerized text analysis program LIWC (specifically we used the new version LIWC2015) (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) to investigate the evolution of the language of the first 11 Issues of Dabiq. LIWC is a software developed in the early 1990s by Pennebaker and colleagues, and further revisions undertaken in 1997 and 2007 to streamline the dictionaries were included (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010). The program automatically opens and analyses text files calculating the percentages of each LIWC category present in the dictionary in the chosen unit of analysis, which in our research was the article. We believe that LIWC is particularly appropriate to investigate ISIS language because it captures aspects of the structure of the language that can reveal implicit motives, emotions and objects of interest, which emerge from the analysis of relevant quantity of text. We acknowledge that Dabiq is a propaganda tool for ISIS, and therefore we have to analyse and interpret its content with caution and appropriate methods: we argue that LIWC offers a unique tool of analysis that unveil latent psychological dimensions and goes beyond the traditional content analysis of the manifest content of the communication.