BEIRUT, Lebanon — The killings have been both deliberately lurid and strangely intimate. Designed for broadcast, they have helped the Islamic State militant group build a brand of violence that shocks with its extreme brutality, yet feels as close to viewers as the family images on their smartphones.
Broadcast specifically to frighten and manipulate, the Islamic State’s flamboyant violence consumes the world’s attention while more familiar threats, like the Syrian government’s barrel bombs, kill far more people but rarely provoke widespread outrage.
A few human rights advocates and antigovernment activists in Syria are trying to reciprocate, creating shocking if nonviolent images and videos — even herding children in orange jumpsuits into a cage — to call attention to the wider scope of violence. So far, though, their voices have hardly been heard.
The Islamic State’s campaign of high-profile killings is not war at a remove, with the mechanized distance of drone strikes or carpet bombing. It is one-on-one slaughter with Hollywood production values, seeking to maximize emotional impact and propaganda value.
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A few have even been tempted to fictionalize. Last year, for instance, a viral video of a Syrian boy saving a girl from sniper fire turned out to have been staged by a Norwegian film crew.
But while some groups want to publicize suffering in order to stop it, analysts said perpetrators like the Islamic State seek to magnify the suffering by inflicting it twice — first on the victim and then on the viewer.
“One of the things about traumatic imagery is that it can numb us and render us passive and helpless,” said Gavin Rees, the Europe director for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. “That is part of the gain for those who are producing these videos: They want to inspire fear and helplessness.”
Mohammad Ghannam contributed reporting.
