According to a report, the amount of media content posted by the violent extremist group per month has plunged from a 700-product peak in August 2015, to below 200 products in August 2016.
Along with overall materials, the number of posts promoting the Islamic State as a governed caliphate has markedly decreased, the report noted. At the same time, video posts depicting the execution of traitors has seen a sharp rise.
“The caliphate was their big selling point. Now there’s an inability to say we’re doing the things that make us a state. And that was behind their broad appeal,” report author Daniel Milton commented in an interview with the New York Times.
Daesh is “struggling to maintain the outward appearance of a functioning state” amid bombing campaigns by the US-led alliance and Russia, researchers noted.
“The Islamic State’s media people are fighters, too. And when they’re fighting, they can’t put out their message,” the paper stressed.
It was earlier confirmed that Daesh official spokesperson and strategist Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani was killed in an air strike near the Syrian city of Al Bab.
The report noted that, despite an overall decrease in posts by Daesh, applications such as Telegram can still be used to spread their increasingly desperate message.
“These challenges are not insurmountable, but require that nations and companies engaged in the fight against the Islamic State continue to learn and evolve in their counterterrorism methodologies as well.”
