ABSTRACT
The paper discusses ISIS’ communicative strategies as a memetic activity.2 The term ‘meme’ was introduced by Dawkins and it is the cultural counterpart of a gene, representing a cultural unit – an idea, value, or behavioural pattern – that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means such as imitation or repetition.3 Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases and religions. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.4 ‘Memes are sustainable information units that influence and form individual and collective systems and spread successfully within them’.5 From an Information Operations (InfoOps) and Psychological Operations (PsyOps) perspective memes are the best active agents to be used because when your message/idea becomes a cultural unit passed between humans, you then have the opportunity to generate an ‘awareness campaign’ to drive actions, or to generate attitudes towards an issue – i.e. consensus. In the case of ISIS, terminologies, ‘discourses’ and narratives of the ‘enemy’, i.e. the West and Europe, are re-appropriated and spun in order to satisfy the organisation’s own needs. The eleven issues of Dabiq magazine, distributed online in English, make it possible for us to understand ISIS’ communicative strategy first hand.6 Analysts agree7 that ISIS employs specific skills in managing the various media available and that it can articulate message production with a distinctive ‘western’ style. This supports the impression that its public diplomacy follows memetic criteria.8 The paper first carries out a quantitative analysis of Dabiq, then analyses the inconsistencies of its self-narrative compared with those of the addressees. Thus, it will be possible to reverse-engineer the memetic processes at work and to discover who learns from whom in this ‘game of mirrors’ where codes are appropriated and legitimised.9 The present discussion, comparing the ISIS narrative to the specific NATO doctrine on InfoOps and PsyOps, claims the presence of exogenous elements in the structuring of the message. These generate an informative process that is neither a narrative nor a counter-narrative, but rather a
narrative against a specific enemy: Europe. Dabiq discourses of/on Europe are thus marginalising where NATO is concerned. Furthermore, the old continent is considered as an enemy/ally of the USA, and thus the target of an asymmetrical narrative that leverages on continental political weaknesses and, in both cases, with a deep impact on European public opinion. Given the nature of this research some confidential sources will be treated according to the Chatham House Rule (CHR):
When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.
