The Islamic State’s online propaganda channels went mysteriously quiet for more than a full day between Wednesday and Thursday, in what analysts said was an “unprecedented” silence.
IS, which uses messaging application Telegram to broadcast daily updates on military operations and claims of attacks, published nothing between 0900 GMT on Wednesday and 1001 GMT on Thursday.
Charlie Winter, senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, called the silence “unprecedented.”
“The deceleration in the production of IS media has been particularly profound over the last couple of weeks,” said Mr. Winter. “But there were no 24-hour periods when it was completely silent,” he said.
IS’s Telegram channels usually post more than a dozen messages each day, ranging from multilingual radio broadcasts on battlefield achievements to pictures of civilian life in the group’s self-styled “caliphate.”
On Wednesday, however, the group posted in a brief 30-minute window, skipping its usual “daily broadcast” entirely.
Radio segment
It then went dark until Thursday, breaking its silence with a four-minute radio segment on operations in eastern Syria and Iraq, only in Arabic.
“IS media infrastructure has taken a real battering over the last few months and because of that, something is changing,” Mr. Winter said.
IS could be physically relocating relevant offices or members, added Mr. Winter, but it may also be laying out a new media strategy to match its own shift from a territorially based organisation to a covert insurgency.
