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Islamic State propaganda is churning out idyllic farmyard scenes, like this grape harvest, that try to portray a utopian view of life under the caliphate. PHOTO:UNCREDITED

In a bustling Iraqi city, road crews fill potholes, while hundreds of miles away in Syria administrators prepare for the new school year and bureaucrats implement a new crop-watering regimen.

Welcome to a week in Islamic State—or at least the vision of the state the terrorist group wants to portray to Muslims skeptical of its self-ascribed authority.

Last year, Islamic State stormed to prominence with its ruthless military tactics and brutal execution videos. Now, its media machine has pivoted to a different—yet still controversial—sales pitch: that it is energetically building the utopian state its puritanical ideology promises.

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During a single month this summer, from mid-July to mid-August, Islamic State produced nearly 900 pieces of Arab-language propaganda, including radio broadcasts, public-service announcements, pamphlets and religious decrees. More than half of this output—52%—focused on quality-of-life issues like food, utilities and schools, while 37% was devoted to military themes. Scenes of brutality, like execution videos, comprised 2%.

Brutality remains a high-profile tactic—Islamic State was accused of executing dozens of Iraqi tribal opponents last week as well as inspiring last weekend’s suicide bombings in Turkey. But Western officials who monitor Islamic State say the data reflect a shift away from fear-based messaging to attempts at positive branding they have tracked since the spring. The group’s official media outlets have more than doubled their output, compared with production levels analyzed in May.

“There is a common impression that Islamic State propaganda starts and ends with brutality. That’s not the case,” said Charlie Winter, a senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation in London who collected and analyzed Islamic State’s official propaganda during that period for a policy paper on how Western governments can better counter Islamic State propaganda. “Statehood is the group’s chief positive message. It understands that by focusing on how it builds its state, it builds legitimacy and silences its detractors.”

Mr. Winter created his archive by monitoring Islamic State’s official Arab-language media outlets and its daily Arab-language social-media hashtag campaigns, which amplify and disseminate its messaging.

The development—and the group’s moves toward state building—creates a new wrinkle for the U.S.-backed coalition against Islamic State, as members debate whether containing the terror group is a more realistic strategy than outright military victory.

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Youngsters watch Islamic State propaganda films in a mobile cinema near the Syria-Iraq border. PHOTO: UNCREDITED

Since announcing its self-proclaimed caliphate last summer, Islamic State has struggled to attract adherents to what it says is its mandate to rule over the world’s more-than-one-billion Muslims. The group has killed thousands of people, often by summary execution, and the United Nations has accused it of war crimes, including rape and enforced slavery of prisoners.

Many nations in the U.S.-backed coalition against Islamic State have officials dedicated to countering the terror group’s appeal and its propaganda. Officials involved in this part of the fight are undecided about the significance of the recent shift in messaging.

Dan Chugg, the head of the U.K. government’s Islamic State task force, told a parliamentary hearing in September that the change occurred about seven months ago, after it had consolidated its territory in Syria and Iraq and cleansed those areas of potential rivals. He said Islamic State may have concluded that brutality had lost some of its efficacy as a governing mechanism.

“ISIL realizes it has a credibility problem—it brutalizes the communities it claims to defend to instill fear, but alienates Muslims all over the world by doing so,” said Rashad Hussain, U.S. special envoy for strategic counterterrorism communications, using another name for Islamic State. “It’s no surprise that they’re trying to paint a false picture of life in the areas they control, but the real story is told by the former fighters who are revealing ISIL’s false promises, terrible living conditions, and the damage ISIL is doing to Muslim communities.”

Many Syrians and Iraqis are appalled by Islamic State’s brutal interpretation of Islam. Thousands of refugees each month are leaving areas the group controls, including middle-class professionals necessary for its state-building goals.

Among the several million people living under Islamic State rule,gauging effectiveness of the new propaganda drive is difficult. Residents can’t speak freely to foreigners, and telephone and Internet communication is monitored.

In Mosul, Iraq, a health-care worker in his mid-30s said Islamic State's propaganda team is influential. Big screens set up in several squares around the city attract many bored young people, he said.

Still, he said, some of the propaganda is true. Food costs, which are controlled and published by decree, are less than in Iraqi government-held areas like Baghdad, and the town is cleaner and better lighted, he said.

Central to Islamic State’s state-building drive is the pervasive civilian bureaucracy put in place by previous Iraqi and Syrian regimes, in addition to its own expanding propaganda apparatus.

The group runs seven centralized media offices, including radio, magazine and online outlets, as well as local departments in each of the 19 administrative districts under its control.

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Islamic State members oversee the destruction of cigarettes in territory controlled by the group in northern Iraq. PHOTO: UNCREDITED

Islamic State propagandists deliver their message to residents in a variety of formats: Trucks equipped with loudspeakers and TV screens roll through the streets blaring Islamic State-sponsored coverage. Messages are reinforced on a radio station called Al-Bayan, which broadcasts a morning and evening report. The group also publishes magazines and pamphlets and moderates official online sites.

This spring, propaganda depicting beheadings and other gory punishments sharply reduced in number, but didn’t stop entirely, said officials monitoring the terror group. Older videos, meanwhile are still heavily distributed online inside and outside Islamic State lands. The propaganda units are now churning out messages focused on state-building. The group’s security divisions have tightened access to private Wi-Fi router sales and licenses for Internet cafes to minimize unauthorized access to other information.

Raqqa, the Syrian city that is Islamic State’s administrative capital, has been at the heart of this campaign. Its media office produces more than any other agency—9% of the group’s output from mid-July to mid-August when Mr. Winter was monitoring it. It also was the tightest in terms of message control: 87% of its output during that period focused on quality of life and the utopia themes.

A regular feature is the city’s seemingly robust street-cleaning crews, as well as photo essays showing well-stocked store shelves and idyllic farmyard scenes. One such dispatch, from Aug. 3, showed a group of prosperous-looking farmers with the caption: “The civilians of the caliphate prevail in agriculture.”

A Raqqa resident said he has noticed a decrease in public beheadings recently, as well as an uptick in municipal services, including sanitation.

Another citizen criticized the group as being overly focused on tasks that lend themselves to photo opportunities.

“In their media, they make it seem perfect. In reality, they only care about cosmetic results,” the person said.

In Deir Ez-Zour, Syria, local Islamic State administrators announced via a local media office a project to repair the agricultural irrigation system. By July, the provincial Islamic State Center for Agriculture and Irrigation announced a new summer crop-planting schedule in which 70% of arable land should be seeded with crops that require only one watering a day.

“This should also draw the peasant’s attention to the decrease in the river level and the importance of preserving irrigation water, and thus it is absolutely forbidden for field lands to be irrigated in violation of this agricultural program,” the decree said.

A local farmer said Islamic State did complete the planned irrigation repairs, but locals have planted around half the usual crop size. “Even though they fixed the [irrigation] system, there is still a shortage of water. Fertilizer is hard to find,” he said.

—Mohammad Nour Alakraa and Ali A. Nabhan contributed to this article.

Write to Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com and Alexis Flynn at alexis.flynn@wsj.com