Although beheading has been a widely employed public execution method since the ancient Greeks and Romans,[2] videos of this type only began to arise in 2002 with the beheading of Daniel Pearl and the growth of the Internet in the Information Age, which allowed groups to anonymously publish these videos for public consumption.
[6] Early videos were grainy and unsophisticated, but, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, had by 2004 been "growing in sophistication, using animated graphics and editing techniques apparently aimed at embellishing the audio to make a victim's final moments seem more disturbing".
[7] These videos are often uploaded to the Internet by terrorists, then discussed and distributed by web-based outlets,[8] such as blogs, shock sites, and traditional journalistic media.
[10] They later complied,[11] and subsequently clarified their policies, stating that beheading videos would only be allowed if posted in a manner intended for its users to "condemn" the acts.
[13] A hoax beheading video filmed by Benjamin Vanderford, Robert Martin, and Laurie Kirchner in 2004 received wide attention from the American press.