The Word and the Bullet: Out-Grouping and Threat Framing as Predictors of Islamic State Targeting, 2015-2020

This study explores the predictive value of the Islamic State’s (IS) public newsletter, Al-Naba, in identifying which of its enemy groups IS targets next. It contributes to existing research on the emergence of permanent terrorist targets by offering predictions and explanations for variations in emphasis among IS’s enduring targets. The article builds on Social Identity Theory and Integrated Threat Theory, and employs a natural language processing approach based on topic modelling. The prominence of topics is compared to variation in IS targeting, using correlation and Granger causality tests.
The findings reveal very strong and highly significant correlations, as well as evidence of Granger causality, between the prominence of topics that emphasize threats from identifiable and accessible groups and the targeting of these groups. This is significant because, although terrorism is often hateful and associated with extreme religiosity, this study shows that it is the perception of threat from a group – not hatred or religious difference – that explains monthly variation in targeting by a terrorist organisation.