Mounting a Facebook Brand Awareness and Safety Ad Campaign to Break the ISIS Brand in Iraq

This article reports on the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE’s) most recent Facebook ad campaign aimed at raising awareness about the realities of living under ISIS and protecting vulnerable potential recruits from considering joining. During the course of 24 days in December of 2017, ICSVE researchers mounted the campaign on Facebook using a counter-narrative video produced by ICSVE. The Facebook ad campaign targeted Iraq, where Facebook is the most widely used social media platform, with ISIS also driving powerful recruiting campaigns on Facebook and enticing youth into joining. The results were promising in terms of driving engagement with our counternarrative video materials, leading close to 1.7 million views and hundreds of specific comments related to both our video content and ISIS in general. In terms of policy implications, in addition to raising awareness about the dangers of joining ISIS and our Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project, the campaign served as an important platform to challenge extremist narratives as well as channel doubt, frustration, and anger into positive exchange of ideas and participation.