Getting Serious on the Information Battlefield

Combatting ISIS with its Own Playbook

Today, the power of the United States to communicate with global audiences is being directly challenged by the Islamic State (ISIS). Over the past year, political and policy leaders have been amazed at how ISIS, once described by President Obama as a “JV” league terrorist organization, could produce a polished magazine and high quality recruiting videos, modify online games, and produce a handful of mobile apps, including one targeting children. Moreover, much of this media activity continues to take place, despite recent battlefield setbacks suffered by the group in both Iraq and Syria.

What contributes to this media agility? In many respects, the rise of ISIS resembled a digital media start-up, using the same strategies that social media sites like Buzzfeed, Vox, or Upworthy have employed. The result is that their content is relevant, acculturated, localized, and focused: an audience-first approach that perfectly matches our 21st century media culture. It is ironic that while the current administration embraces digital technology, it finds itself in the role of a traditional company being disrupted by an agile digital media start-up.

Our foreign policy is now caught in the same cycles of innovation and disruption that the rest of our economy has experienced. ISIS, moreover, has continued to innovate in the media space. Unlike its sluggish, cumbersome precursor, al-Qaeda, ISIS messaging has high production values, themes that resonate with disaffected youths, both in the Middle East and beyond, and has heavily exploited an array of social media platforms. ISIS, in other words, does not shy away from occupying the same informational space as its target constituency — something that al-Qaeda never mastered in its heyday.

The media savvy informational campaign waged by ISIS has vexed the United States and its allies, who have struggled to counter ISIS’s message effectively, let alone prevent further radicalization among the group’s target audience. The good news is that America is learning from its failures and are retooling their strategy to an influence-based campaign — one that, with luck, will get back into the media game.

While it may be obvious to most, it took a while for the U.S. government to learn that “if you can’t beat them, join them.” The initial counter-propaganda strategy marshaled by the Obama administration was an abject failure. For example, the State Department, via its now-defunct Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), attempted to counter the Islamic State’s brutally effective personal messaging strategy with a high minded campaign known as “Think Again, Turn Away,” which attempted to dampen ISIS’ appeal by providing “truths about terrorism” and “straight talk” about the group’s brutality. That policy failed, among other reasons, because the bloodthirsty nature of the Islamic State was precisely what was drawing alienated youth to its cause.

Today, however, Washington is starting to do better. The White House and State Department have begun retooling their strategy toward an influence-based campaign spearheaded by State’s new Global Engagement Center (GES). The approach moves away from directly messaging ISIS and its supporters in favor of a focus “on empowering and enabling partners” who can provide a potent counterweight to the group’s “nihilistic vision.”

At the core of this approach is a critical realization: that direct U.S. government messaging is not seen as credible to the target audience. Rather, the new approach banks on the fact that, by supporting a network of regional actors — state-sponsored message centers, non-governmental social organizations and even individual activists — the United States can engage local audiences through media channels that are both relevant and personal. In other words, the U.S. is replicating the communication campaign that ISIS has pioneered so effectively.

It remains to be seen if the U.S. government’s new counter-ISIS strategy can turn the tide of public opinion against the Islamic State. What is already clear, however, is that the informational space is a crucial battlefield in the current fight against today’s most potent terrorist group. The Obama administration’s recent moves are a heartening sign that it is finally getting serious about engaging the Islamic State, a 21st Century adversary, where it resides.

Robert Bole is the Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy for the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.

Originally appeared in U.S. News & World Report on October 25th, 2016