Is the separation of act from ideology the key to effective P/CVE programming?

Research Title: Differentiating Act from Ideology: Evidence from Messages For and Against Violent Extremism

Research Authors: Sheryl Prentice, Paul J. Taylor, Paul Rayson, Ellen Giebels

Research Publisher: Negotiation and Conflict Management Research Journal

Research Publication date: 2012

What read this research?

Violent Extremism—and thus countering, preventing, and/or transforming violent extremism—has long been an area of interest within the peacebuilding field. While we’ve had a growth in countering and/or preventing violent extremism programming, we’ve also seen an increase in violent extremism globally, including here in the United States. Additionally, in line with global trends, the increased use of technology and virtual platforms for messaging further expands the reach and influence of violent extremists.

While there has been a lot of research around messaging strategies that influence people towards extremism, there is a smaller quantity of research to better understand what messaging strategies effectively counter/prevent violent extremism. Due to this disproportionate quantity of research available on “counter-messaging” and “pro-messaging”, it is even harder to understand how the two interact with one another. This research aims to fill in that gap in knowledge.

With a sample size of 250 counter-extremist violence messages and 250 pro-extremist violence messages, this research aims to predict that “the most applicable perspective on the relationship between extremist and counter-extremist messages is dependent on the evaluations and affiliations of the authors”. Of the 250 counter-messages, 200 were Muslim-authored texts while the remaining 50 were U.K. officials’ statements. These message sets were analyzed for semantic content using Wmatrix where both overused and underused semantic categories in the messages were identified. Further corpus linguistic analysis such as concordance examples and collocate information were also used. The use of concordance examples allows researchers to view key words and/or concepts within their immediate context whereas collocate information highlights words used commonly within a pre-defined span of key words and/or concepts.

Overall the study found that “the content of Muslim-authored extremist and counter-extremist messages shared ideological content but distinct views on the acts used to achieve such goals.” The research also found that there was a difference in the concept of “law and order” between the UK Officials’ and Muslim texts. For Muslim authored counter-messages, if “terrorism” is viewed as “religious warfare”, then not all forms of “terrorism” are viewed as criminal but instead some forms are viewed as acceptable to combat injustice. However, for UK Officials’ texts, “terrorism” in the same sense is equivalent to crime. Additionally, UK officials’ counter-message sets and Muslim authored counter-message sets saw the greatest dissimilarities, further emphasizing the notion that counter-messaging strategies are not a homogenous group.

The findings of this research emphasizes the importance of grounding interventions in their specific contexts, taking lead from members of the respective communities themselves. While VE has no boundaries in terms of geographical expanse and/or the individuals that engage in VE, a vast set of approaches initiated by governments to counter VE are grounded in western principles and values. If the problem set itself is diverse, then the intervention approach will also need to be diverse to be comprehensively effective. Looking at interventions as one homogenous group limits our understanding of what truly works and does not, further limiting our ability to program effectively.

Lastly, while this research highlights the importance of better understanding counter messaging strategies, it also introduces us to new technologies that can be used to do the same. We as a field have advanced in big strides from the use of quantitative tools such as concordance and collocate analyses that can test persuasive levers to the development of frameworks to better understand influence strategies. While there is still room for growth, there is a substantial foundation of tools and techniques brewing to better understand phenomena like VE and analyze the effectiveness of respective interventions to counter the same.

AfP Blog Author: Shaziya DeYoung - Researcher, Learning & Evidence