Within the ranks of Isis, several categories of members hold a lofty status: the leaders who devise terror plots and battles, and those with cameras and microphones who chronicle them.
Senior fighters and propagandists hold more or less equal status in the world’s most digital-savvy terror group. Isis has harnessed better than any of its rivals or predecessors the capacity to shape its message through media.
The latest production, in which the UK is directly threatened and five captives are slaughtered, emphasises themes that have remained constant for the past 18 months. This was made for an English-speaking audience, but along the way there have been other videos produced in French, Russian and even Hebrew, by cadres who have flocked to the so-called caliphate.
Those who lived among you now want to harm you – so the message goes. And to hammer that home, the video threats are made with vivid high-definition clarity, filmed from multiple angles and using production values that give barbarism the feel of reality television.
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