Media: The Battlefield of ISIS's Intelligent Power

The studies in political sociology shows that people are not flexible towards yielding to the totalitarian structures like past times to surrender hard power. In these situations, upper layers of the structure will attempt to draw the attentions of the lower layers by using their more pliable policies (soft power) instead of appealing to the authoritarian approaches, thus to guarantee the accomplishment of their policies.
The experiences of September 11 events and then the inefficiency of the “hard power” followed by the incapability of the “soft power” to resolve the problems and achieve the goals, revealed a subtle necessity for conjunction of the two aforementioned powers. Henceforth, a new theory called “intelligent power” was proposed in which the military force as a definitive prerequisite, not essence to impact, was questioned.
On the other side, by virtue of the informational revolution, the present age has changed organizational and political structures. Revolution of information in the modern era has reshaped the political and organizational structures, rather than sticking to the traditional top-to-bottom hierarchies. Dynamism of the public opinions and its conformation, and the legitimating of an objective with a specific strategy define the primary concern and function of the “intelligent power” which can be executed via the media, considering its impressive influence.
By using a descriptive-analytical approach and by studying of the “ISIS” activity history in the Middle East’s political arena and by analyzing the contents of this group’s media, this article attempts to examine and explore the hypothesis of their efficient use of the media towards demonstrating their intelligent power, with the aim of justifying their violent actions and ushering the Arab world’s public opinions.