Umar Muhammad Muhammad1, &AbubakarAbubakar Usman2
1Faculty of Law and International Relations, Universiti Sultan ZainalAbidin, Malaysia
2Asia Middle East Centre for Research and Dialogue (AMEC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Corresponding author’s email: abuibtisam10@gmail.com
Abstract
Scholars have increasingly sought commonalities among Islamist radical groups, such as ISIS and Boko Haram, despite their ideological differences. The purpose of this qualitative studyis to conduct acomprehensive analysis of both ISIS and Boko Haram’s digital campaignsto identify similarities and differences in the content of their digital messaging. Adopting reflexive thematic analysis to explore and interpret dataset which eventually allows to uncover patterns, themes, and meanings within the data, this study, utilized the “propaganda by deed” theory to examines and analyse 20 ISIS Arabic Twitter campaigns and 20 Boko Haram video messages. Data was collected and employed to NVivo software for coding and analysis. The analysis reveals four prominent themes for each group: ISIS emphasizes recruitment, direct calls to jihad, religious discourse, and commemoration of deceased membersto attract or mobilize followers. In contrast, Boko Haram’s themes include ideological declarations, religious narratives, affiliations with other groups, and recruitment with calls to jihad. These findings provide a nuanced understanding of both groups, with improved quality for digital campaign in the side of Boko Haram as a result of its allegiance with ISIS, informing more effective and appropriate countermeasures against them and further prevent possible future direct relationship between the two groups
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