ABSTRACT
Introduction The previous chapter explored the role of the new media ecology in helping to support and legitimise the ailing ideology of Jihadism in the twenty-first century. The importance ascribed to the media has allowed the articulation and ascendancy of a very particular form of radical Islamist activism – namely the media Jihad. This chapter sets out how the new media ecology has facilitated the rise of the ‘virtual Jihad’ or the ‘media Jihad’, which has increasingly gained prominence and credibility as a legitimate alternative to the traditional militaristic or ‘real’ Jihad. Media Jihad allows for the production, dissemination, (re)mediation and proliferation of material that serves to reinforce Jihadist leaders’ interpretation of ongoing events and the situating of those events within larger narratives of a war on Islam, which may resonate with potential supporters’ experience in daily life in whichever country they reside. However, the emergence of Web 2.0 participatory media has diminished traditional Jihadist leaders’ control over ‘the message’, as a diffuse collective of autonomous supporters – including women – have brought Jihadist media culture to broader audiences but at the same time significantly altered the ideology. This process has run parallel to the struggle between mainstream, professional news media, and blogs, social network sites and citizen journalism or what Gillmor (2006) called We the Media. This shift in authority and control has coincided with changes to how Jihadist action is legitimated. This chapter documents how credibility in Jihadist media spaces has in some cases shifted from legitimation through scholarly or religious expertise to ‘propaganda of the deed’; several figures have gained popularity and support within this culture by leaving the virtual realm to participate in violent activities ‘in the field’. Nevertheless, for many supporters this is not an attractive or feasible option, and the cathartic opportunity to engage in modes of ‘info-war’ or propaganda battle is deemed sufficient (though this carries its own risks still, such as arrest). What this history of the recent present demonstrates is that the new media ecology brings risks and contingencies to Jihadists too; Web 2.0 and the opportunity to engage and persuade broader audiences carries with it the danger of the Jihadist ideology or narrative being detached from any core, official or central
authority. So, not only does this make it difficult to construct models or generalise about the effects of Jihadist media or the Jihadist media culture on potential supporters, but Jihadist leaders themselves face difficulties understanding how their ideology could be legitimated in these fast-changing media conditions. The new media ecology enables new connectivities that make it difficult to think in terms of local or global, virtual or real. Indeed, we begin by asking whether ‘global’ Jihad was even possible before the Internet.
