When the so-called Islamic State ramped up its media operation in the summer of 2014 to promote its territorial advances across Iraq and Syria, terrorism researchers who had been in the business for a decade or more were forced to take a step back and reconsider the effect the propaganda was having on them.
Not only had the output increased in volume and become more gory – depicted in high definition, compared with the grainy beheading videos of the Iraq war in 2004 – but the way it was now mediated in a relentless bombardment of images via platforms like Twitter had also increased the impact.
Meanwhile, greater appreciation of the risks of vicarious trauma for people engaged in work witnessing horrific events online had also been developing, so although the problem had grown, understanding about how to mitigate the risks and reduce the impact was also increasing.