Has ISIS Gone Hollywood? Visual Strategies and Images of Destruction in ISIS’s Magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah

Images of the destruction of world heritage and videos of human executions carried out by the Islamic State (ISIS, IS, ISIL) have been widely disseminated through social media and by ISIS itself in order to draw attention to its cause. However, the content of the ISIS on-line magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah published by the ISIS official media center al-Hayat has rarely been discussed outside the specialized circles of war and counterterrorist experts. This paper focuses on the visual identity of these magazines by analyzing cover pages and selected lead images of feature articles in an attempt to answer the following questions: What kind of visual identity is created in these publications and how successful are they as examples of modern visual propaganda addressing a Western audience? Visual referencing to horror and action movie posters, broadcasting graphics and art photography creates a varied visual environment while the abundance of visual content and the professional quality of the graphic design stri...