EEG distinguishes heroic narratives in ISIS online video propaganda

The Islamic State (ISIS) was uniquely effective among extremist groups in the Middle East at recruiting Westerners. A major way ISIS accomplished this was by adopting Hollywood-style narrative structures for their propaganda videos. In particular, ISIS utilized a heroic martyr narrative, which focus...

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Veröffentlicht in:Scientific reports Jg. 10; H. 1; S. 19593
Hauptverfasser: Yoder, Keith J., Ruby, Keven, Pape, Robert, Decety, Jean
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: London Nature Publishing Group UK 11.11.2020
Nature Publishing Group
Schlagworte:
631/378
631/477
631/477/2811
Adolescent
Adult
Courage
EEG
Electroencephalography - methods
Emotions
Empathy
Empowerment
Ethics
Female
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Internet
Islam
Male
Middle Aged
multidisciplinary
Narratives
Propaganda
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Terrorism
Young Adult
ISSN:2045-2322, 2045-2322
Online-Zugang:Volltext
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Zusammenfassung:The Islamic State (ISIS) was uniquely effective among extremist groups in the Middle East at recruiting Westerners. A major way ISIS accomplished this was by adopting Hollywood-style narrative structures for their propaganda videos. In particular, ISIS utilized a heroic martyr narrative, which focuses on an individual’s personal glory and empowerment, in addition to traditional social martyr narratives, which emphasize duty to kindred and religion. The current work presented adult participants (n = 238) video clips from ISIS propaganda which utilized either heroic or social martyr narratives and collected behavioral measures of appeal, narrative transportation, and psychological dispositions (egoism and empathy) associated with attraction to terrorism. Narrative transportation and the interaction between egoism and empathy predicted video recruitment appeal. A subset of adults (n = 80) underwent electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements while watching a subset of the video-clips. Complementary univariate and multivariate techniques characterized spectral power density differences when perceiving the different types of narratives. Heroic videos show increased beta power over frontal sites, and globally increased alpha. In contrast, social narratives showed greater frontal theta, an index of negative feedback and emotion regulation. The results provide strong evidence that ISIS heroic narratives are specifically processed, and appeal to psychological predispositions distinctly from other recruitment narratives.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-76711-0