During the past year, the Islamic State (IS) has taken control of extensive areas of the Middle East. Its military achievements, extreme and historically unprecedented barbarism, success in recruiting thousands of young people from around the world to its ranks in Iraq and Syria, its store of financial resources and, above all, its skilled use of social and other media to publicize its terrorist acts and spread its propaganda, have all made IS an increasing and alarming threat to global security. Although experts on terrorism, security officials and decision makers worldwide concur that IS poses an unparalleled threat, they disagree about the answers to the following four key questions: What is the nature of the Islamic State?; Are the doctrines of the Islamic State an innovation?; What are the Islamic State’s aspirations? and, What is the Islamic State’s strategic situation? How we answer these four questions will affect not only our understanding of the nature, aims and activities of the Islamic State; it will also dictate what counter-strategy should be implemented in order to stop, if not trounce, the Islamic State.
The study aimed to identify the media consumption patterns of the Arab Spring revolutions from the viewpoint of Yarmouk University students. In addition to detect whether there is a statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α = 0.05) with respect to the views of respondents regarding employing the study dimensions related to political, military and human dimension due to the variables of the study (sex, educational qualification). The study sample consisted of Yarmouk University students (200) students. The descriptive analytical method was used, through which the following results were concluded: 1. Identifying the media consumption patterns on the Arab Spring. 2. No statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α = 0.05) with respect to the views of respondents about media consumption patterns of the Arab Spring due to the variable of sex. 3. There are no statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α = 0.05) with respect to the views of respondents about media consumption patterns around of Arab Spring due to the educational qualification variable. Based on the results of the theoretical and empirical study, the researcher suggests the following: Identify the mechanisms through which media networks broadcast the political propaganda related to the political, military and human dimensions, and the procedures used to do so. Also studying the methods by which the propaganda messages are being broadcast and analyzed, and employing them for the public interest. In addition to analyzing the means by which the propaganda messages are sent whether they are political or other, with focusing on the procedures used to publish them. Finally, identifying the media mechanisms to dedicate the phenomenon of political propaganda based on honesty and objectivity in the media work.