Between rap and jihad: spectacular subcutlures, terrorism and visuality

This article underlines the importance of terrorist jihadist online communication. The visual expressions of sociocultural identity are a trademark of jihadist terrorist groups. This paper also shows that subcultural perspective constitutes a privileged point of view for the analysis of the phenomenon of Western-born jihadist terrorism. In scientific literature there is a lack of empirical research on the visual dimension of jihadist terrorism in a subcultural perspective. In this perspective, the article analyses the subcultural identity of a Western-born jihadist terrorist, the former rapper Deso Dogg, also known as Abu-Maleeq. This paper proposes an original analysis of terrorist group membership, analysing through visual sociology the YouTube videos of Deso Dogg – Abu-Maleeq. The visual jihadist representation is based on the repetition of semantic elements. This result confirms the importance of the semantic coherence of communication, namely the Hebdigian homology. Furthermore, terrorist communication assigns new meanings to traditional cultural elements. This result confirms the relevance of the subcultural practice of bricolage. In conclusion, the article allows an original perspective for the study of terrorist communication and underlines the importance of Hebdigian perspective for the understanding of what processes turned troubled Western youth into terrorists.