Identity and Narrative Persuasion: How ISIS Western-Directed Propaganda Works

This study presents an identity-centered narrative theory of high-risk political activism to explain how narratives engage with social identities, and how variation in narratives can be strategically deployed by political actors to engage different mobilization pools. Narratives are stories that persuade through identification with plot and characters, with mobilization bringing expressive payoffs. Narratives tailored to identities maximizes their recruitment potential. Our empirical case is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s Western-directed video recruitment campaign. We argue that ISIS’s use of tailored narratives explains its success in mobilizing diverse social identities within the community of Muslims living in the West. We present evidence for the theory from an online survey experiment with 139 US and Canadian Muslims and analyses of narratives in 16 ISIS propaganda videos and motives in 148 US ISIS perpetrators. The paper helps explain how appeals targeting identities can mobilize, including under circumstances of widespread social disapproval.