The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) has been collecting, monitoring, and analyzing militant group propaganda as a core component of its research since it's founding in 2004. Early work focused on so-called "martyr videos" produced by groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda to draw attention to the group's goals and build support for suicide terrorism.
In 2015, coinciding with the rise of ISIS and with renewed support from the U.S. Department of Defense, CPOST expanded its reasearch and monitoring to all official propaganda produced by ISIS, AQ, AQAP, Al Shabaab, and the Taliban.
In March 2020, CPOST launched the Arabic Propaganda Analysis Team (APAT), a new project to analyze militant propaganda by groups like ISIS, AQAP, and AQ targeting audiences in the Arabic-speaking world. The APAT builds on CPOST’s decade of research by applying its experience and expertise in monitoring, collecting, and analyzing terrorist group video propaganda to systematically studying terrorist group efforts to recruit in the Gulf States, Middle East, and North Africa.