An integrated approach to Islamic State recruitment (Charlie Winter, ASPI)

Today, jihadism is at once more globalised and closer to home than ever before. In seeking to explore how Islamic State has been able to attract tens of thousands of fighters from as many as 86 states across the world, the media limelight has shone brightly on stories like that of Australian Jake Bilardi, but nuanced understanding of recruitment is routinely sacrificed.

The author, Charlie Winter, is a Senior Research Associate at Georgia State University’s Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative, where his research focuses on transnational jihadist movements and insurgency. As well as managing a Department of Defense Minerva Research Initiative Project, ‘Preventing the next generation: mapping the pathways of child mobilization into violent extremist organizations’, he is quantitatively and qualitatively assessing Islamic State’s outreach strategy, and specialising in the sourcing, translation, and analysis of Arabic-language documents circulated online by jihadists

https://www.aspi.org.au/publications/an-integrated-approach-to-islamic-state-recruitment

ISIS' offline propaganda strategy (Charlie Winter, Brookings)

In the last few years, the Islamic State has expended a staggering amount of energy in pursuit of a position at the top of the global jihadist food chain. Given its sustained control over of huge tracts of land in Iraq and Syria, declaration of a transnational caliphate, and wide-ranging assaults against civilians from Paris to Jakarta, some would say it has achieved this with remarkable efficiency. However, being at the top of the food chain comes with consequences and, in recent months at least, things have not been going the Islamic State’s way: its leaders are being killed, injured or captured at a rate of knots, its financial infrastructure is being decoded and undermined, and foreign fighters are facing more obstacles than ever before.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/03/31-isis-propaganda-strategy-winter