A number of members of the international Salafist group al-Qaeda regularly address the crowds through communiqués. Analyses of these, often generic, fail to bring out the group’s internal divergences, or even to underline the methods that give the communiqués a certain impact among the public. This article is an intuitive analysis of al-Qaeda members’ communication strategy and a comparison with the welltried methods of marketing strategy.
Al-Qaeda's Communication Strategy: a Window on the Movement
On 29 December 2007, a video of Osama bin Laden was broadcast on Islamist websites, and subsequently on CNN. Although this video ran for about 46 minutes in total, bin Laden appeared for only 50 seconds. The broadcasting of this video had been announced with great ceremony two days before on several Islamist and jihadist sites.
Several Internet sites now allow accredited journalists to pose questions for transmission to Ayman al-Zawahiri. He replies through the medium of messages relayed by the broadcasting ‘company’ al-Sahab, whose name is known but whose functioning is still obscure.
In this article, we discuss al-Qaeda’s communication strategies, its methods, and also what these can tell us.
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