Who uses Internet propaganda in civil wars and why?

Barbara F Walter and Gregoire Phillips
Additional contact information
Barbara F Walter: School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego, USA
Gregoire Phillips: Ericsson Research, Santa Clara, USA

Journal of Peace Research, 2025, vol. 62, issue 3, 550-563

Abstract: This article explores who is likely to benefit from Internet propaganda in civil wars. It argues that the global reach of the Internet, its lack of regulation and its filtering tools are more likely to help transnational rebel groups with external support and radical aims than local groups with home-grown support and moderate aims. The paper then introduces a new dataset on rebel propaganda that includes every available piece of public, downloadable Internet communication produced by every major rebel group in the Iraqi civil war between January 2011 and December 2015. A preliminary analysis of group-level Internet communication during the war revealed a number of striking patterns. Internet propaganda was not equally used by all rebel groups in Iraq during this time period. Groups with potentially larger international backing and low levels of local support were much more likely to produce Internet propaganda than those with strong in-country support. Ideologically extreme groups were also more likely to generate a higher volume of Internet propaganda than other types of groups. Finally, rebel groups that were new to a war tended to rely more heavily on Internet propaganda than more well-established groups. The article concludes by discussing the potential implications this new media environment could have for civil wars moving forward.

Keywords: civil war; collective action problems; internet propaganda; Iraq; rebel groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433241235854 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:62:y:2025:i:3:p:550-563

DOI: 10.1177/00223433241235854

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().