Islamic State has lost thousands of fighters while its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria has collapsed. But ISIS remains influential in part because of its media visibility, the New York Times reports.

On New Year’s Day, a man flying an Islamic State flag killed at least 14 people when he drove his vehicle into a crowd in New Orleans. Authorities say there is no evidence that the man, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, had active links to the terror group. But the FBI said it was “100% inspired by ISIS.”

It is not yet clear what specific online content Jabbar may have viewed or how else he may have become radicalized. Experts noted that placing the flag on the truck resembled an ISIS campaign inciting its followers to violence. And, authorities said, the attacker posted several videos on his Facebook account before his attack in which he pledged allegiance to ISIS.

From online videos to social media platforms – even a weekly IS newsletter – it turns out the group has a very sophisticated media strategy.

“Terrorism is fundamentally based on communication,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former United Nations diplomat who is the senior director of an extremism think tank. “It’s not a war, because obviously, ISIS can’t defeat the West militarily, right? They tried and it didn’t end well.”

The terrorist newsletter

How did the Islamic State keep its influence alive? In part, turning his movement into a global franchise beyond the Middle East, with active enclaves in Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Turkey, among others.

But the glue that holds the disparate elements together, and also helps inspire “lone wolves” like Jabbar to carry out their own attacks, is the Islamic State’s sophisticated media operation. Experts say that while it is doubtful that the media business has a physical headquarters, it is highly centralized and controlled by its media management. Much of its production appears to come from subsidiaries in Africa, which have recently been the most active in attacks.

The group also publishes an online weekly newsletter called Al Naba, or The News, which details the group’s latest actions, implicitly encouraging followers to commit acts of violence.

“The Al Naba newsletter comes out every Thursday, which is one of the most impressive things the group can do,” said Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Middle East Islam at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“They have an editorial. They cover the various provinces, as they say, and the attacks of the week. They calculate the number of attacks and victims they claim to have achieved. And that’s the main way they stay connected to their global support base,” he said.

The most recent version of the bulletin, published on Jan. 2, did not mention the New Orleans attack, and Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for it.

Al Naba initially published through the messaging app Telegram and other platforms, constantly adjusting its activities as different channels were shut down, said Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute who has tracked the activities and propaganda of Islamist groups for more than 15 years.

The group’s supporters have also spread messages on Twitter, Facebook pages and other social media platforms, according to investigators. When their user profiles are blocked, they often just create new ones. Islamic State has used decentralized Internet tools that are harder to shut down and moved some of its messages to the dark web, Mr. Zelin.

Terrorism analysts say it has been easy for extremists to connect with potential supporters on social media because of obstacles from some companies that operate the platforms as well as government crackdowns.

Schindler said that in light of the attack in New Orleans, both political parties should ask: “Why is this huge industry with these profits not helping our security agencies prevent attacks like this? Why don’t we get a tip, like we get from the banks and every financial institution in North America and the world, that there’s a terrorist here, or a tip that there’s a process of radicalization going on?”

Terrorism experts say Islamic State’s dominance of media and mass media is key to its success. Al Qaeda, from which the Islamic State split in 2013, laid the groundwork, publishing both online and print magazines, as well as producing videos and social media.

“Kill them where you find them”

In January 2024, the extremist group revived a campaign addressed to its followers around the world: “kill them wherever you find them,” was the slogan, referring to a verse in the Koran.

The idea, which first surfaced in 2015, was to encourage would-be followers to commit acts of jihad in their home country instead of traveling to Iraq and Syria. This strategy became even more important when the caliphate was defeated.

During the period when Islamic State was expanding its territory in Syria and then Iraq (2013-2017) and wanted to gain followers in the West, gruesome images of violence, such as the beheading of photojournalist James Wright Foley, had come to light.

Now, experts say social media platforms are doing much of the work to spread the Islamic State message, as algorithms steer some users deeper and deeper into the extremist worldview.

“Terrorist groups no longer need to put much effort into radicalizing people, the algorithm does it for them,” said Mr. Schindler. “The point of the algorithm is to keep the user on the platform, to give them what they like even if it’s Islamic extremism.

The danger of escaping from the camps in Syria

In Syria, where Islamic State took advantage of a long civil war to seize a large swath of territory, only to lose it to US-backed fighters, the group has begun to rebound, stepping up its attacks. That trend may continue because President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was suddenly toppled in December by another extremist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was once linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

The situation is still fluid, but some analysts fear that the Islamic State could regain ground amid the chaos. The group’s newsletter criticizes Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, calling them “jihadists turned politicians”. However, he does not call for attacks against them.

Meanwhile, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other rebel groups say they will have to take on the role of guarding Islamic State prisoners in eastern Syria and managing the camps that hold about 40,000 Islamic State fighters and family members, a job which they have been doing for almost five years under the leadership of the Kurds, the Syrian Defense Forces, which supported by the United States. Many terrorism experts question how Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which once had ties to Islamic State but later broke off, could carry out its mission of suppressing it.

The Islamic State has recently renewed its media campaign called “Breaking the Walls”, which encourages imprisoned fighters to escape from prisons in eastern Syria and free their families.

If that succeeds, Zelin said, it would be a “catastrophe.”