A tale of two cities in Iraq and the Levant: An analytical study of the narration and counter-narration in the television coverage of the activities of the Islamic State

The world was surprised by the repeated defeats of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and its repeated withdrawals from one city after another with the same amount of surprise that accompanied the successes of the terrorist organization in controlling cities in Iraq and Syria, taking advantage of the security and political vacuum that accompanied the political chaos that struck the Arab region since 2011 and the fall of political regimes, that settled for many years in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and things turned out accordingly in both Syria and Iraq. Arab news channels provided various explanations for the reasons for the emergence and development of this new situation on the political scene in the world, as for the first time a terrorist organization was able to declare a state and control vast areas and major cities in two Arab countries. Just as the narratives explaining the emergence and development varied, so did the narratives of the news coverage of the decline and defeat of the terrorists between satellite channels on the one hand and the media production of the terrorist organization on the other hand.
There is no doubt that there is a dialectical relationship linking the media to the goals of terrorist groups. Both journalists and extremist organizations need the other. The journalist needs to reveal the conspiracies planned and carried out by these organizations to achieve the scoop, and organizations need media coverage and attract the attention of the media to their activities in order to achieve their goals. In provoking public panic and suggesting its power to pressure the political regimes in the countries in which they are active and blackmail them to achieve their criminal goals or to arouse the sympathy of the naive and the superficial with their cause in order to attract more followers, from here lies the danger of the media’s treatment of these activities, as they require a high degree of professionalism by journalists so that it does not turn unintentionally or unknowingly to one of the mechanisms used by these organizations to achieve their goals. This study sought to search for patterns of news storytelling presented by the media outlets of the terrorist organization and compare that with the counter-narrative presented by both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya networks for the terrorist activities of ISIS in the early stages. The study reached a variety of results, the most important of which is that the narrative presented by the terrorist organization was based on the rhetoric of the terrorist organization. Blame and hostility to the West and the international conspiracy to prevent the return of past glories, while the counter-narrative in the Arab channels was based - in different proportions between the two channels under study - on the catastrophic results of the organization’s actions without presenting a real counter-narrative that criticizes the structure of the narrative presented by terrorism and attracts loyalists and supporters, which is what the study prepared a serious flaw It recommended officials and decision makers in the formulation of media policies to beware of it.