The corpus of the current research consists of 131 self-representational photographs selected from all 13 issues of Rumiyah’s English-version of IS’s online magazine in PDF format, which were published from September 5, 2016 to September 9 2017. The Rumiyah issues were taken from Dr. Arne Scheuermann in January 2018 but are also accessible on the Internet through third party websites.

Initially, I had limited my study to the depictions of male IS fighters, both adult men and male child soldiers. Based on the actions visible in the image and the accompanying text, I was able to identify individual(s) as IS-member or IS-enemy; with few exceptions I had to resort to the text accompanying the photograph. Women are routinely excluded from Rumiyah’s visuals, and instead, the visuals of all the articles addressing women are of objects, floral patterns or nature depending on the topic of each article. At a later stage of this research, I decided to address these visuals due to the fact that women are also affiliated with the group and are part of the fully-functioning “state” the group aims to establish.