TERRORISM AND THE MEDIA (original) (raw)
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Assembling and deconstructing radicalisation in PREVENT: A case of policy-based evidence making?
Critical Social Policy, 2016
In the last 15 years the concept of radicalisation has come to prominence as a means of explaining the process by which individuals become attracted to extremist ideology and endorse the actions of terrorist groups. Post 9/11, radicalisation has gained traction in policy, political and media circles in Britain, being commonly connected to the threat of ‘home-grown’ terrorism. In this article, we critique the understanding of radicalisation outlined in the UK Government’s PREVENT strategy. We focus specifically on how particular understandings of radicalisation are constructed, evidenced and operationalised in PREVENT and the way in which these understandings align with party political worldviews. It is posited that an unremitting focus on the role of religious ideology in the process of radicalisation within PREVENT mutes recognition of otherwise important material grievances expressed by individuals involved in violent extremism. At a broader level, our analysis adds to growing con...
The report argues that, in the post-9/11 world, managing the imagined threat of terrorism is as much, if not more, important than dealing with its real threat. This is not only due to the peculiar nature of the global War On Terror, a struggle for “hearts and minds” and for the moral high ground, but also to the relevance of perceptions within an increasingly media-saturated international environment. Starting from the analysis of the government/media interactions in a range of terrorist alerts in the UK, the report identifies a series of problem areas in successfully countering the imagined threat. They not only apply to the UK, but to the whole Euro-Atlantic context and span from defining (framing) the threat in “manageable” terms to approaching the media as a different kind of actor than normally regarded by politicians. The research suggests that, if these problems are not addressed, they could not only contribute to a heightened sense of society’s vulnerability, but also to a weakening of trust in authorities and the information they provide the public with. This would, in turn, erode our democratic institutions and ultimately raise the question of whether we can really win the war on terrorism.
The media’s contribution to the rise and spread of radicalisation.
This essay reviews the relationship between the media and radicalisation. It will analyse a number of symbiotic relationships between politicians, the media, terrorists, Islamophobia and radicalisation. With the focus on Muslim radicalisation given the contemporary reality, the case will be made that the media plays a role in the radicalisation of individuals. In support of the argument, evidence will be presented to show that Islamophobia and radicalisation share a key symbiotic relationship, with the mainstream media a willing facilitator in the bipartite arrangement. Influencing this relationship is a number of additional factors such as political rhetoric and terrorist recruitment which will also be reviewed. The main factor behind some of the mainstream media’s complicity in radicalisation is its current reliance on ideological conflict journalism on matters related to Muslims and Islam. The various types of media will be analysed and the extent to which each segment contributes to radicalisation described.
2014
The thesis evaluates the impact the inclusion of Prevent had on CONTEST, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, both in terms of innovative and tension which arose throughout the three stages of the policy process: its formation, implementation and social impacts. Many of the tensions identified are not unique to Prevent and appear to be inherent in prevention and policing policies more generally. The thesis relies on qualitative interviews with national policy makers, and local professionals in a case study area in the North of England, as well as focus groups with members of Muslim communities in the same case study area. Three broad areas of tensions were identified. The first policy tensions centred on the debate about how to prevent violent extremism, communication of the strategy and the merits of excluding community cohesion as a means of tackling extremism per se. The majority of the national policy makers, including senior police officers and local professionals, agreed that contrary to the Prevent Review 2011, community cohesion should remain an integral part of Prevent. Secondly, there are organizational tensions. These tensions mainly relate to inter- and intra-organizational issues such as funding, information-sharing and evaluation. One of the main areas of conflict identified was the relationship between the national and local authorities. Thirdly, the thesis identified tensions relating to Prevent’s impact on the local community. This thesis suggests that Prevent had little influence, and that most perceptions about counter-terrorism and Prevent were shaped by negative political and media discourse about Islam and British Muslim communities. This has led to disengagement amongst the Muslim communities in the case study area with Prevent and local authorities in general, the limiting of freedom of expression through external social control, and the inability/unwillingness of these communities to tackle such extremism as might exist in their midst.
This article identifies a fault in the PREVENT strand in the UK"s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST. The fault is that its model of the sort of radicalization that leads to violence presupposes that people are exposed to radical ideas, more or less consciously weigh them up against alternatives, and adopt them along with the lines of action they entail. That is a good strategy as far as it goes: surely some are radicalized this way, and an appropriate way of countering that is to expose them to a critique of radical ideas. But that strategy misses the possibility that there are other routes to the sort of radicalization that leads to a readiness to kill and be killed. People may be carried away into that by what I shall call Theatre in this article, without weighing up what they are doing. So just exposing them to alternative ideas is futile. Missing that is a serious and potentially lethal flaw in PREVENT, and so it needs a rethink of its counter-radicalization strategy.