Counternarratives

The Radicalisation Awareness Network’s (RAN) Communications & Narratives’ Working Group meeting on 13 and 14 February, 2017 in Brussels focused on how to measure the impact of an online counter or alternative narrative message; the following post is adapted from the ex-ante paper circulated prior to the meeting, which drew from the Institute for Strategic ...

The EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) brings together practitioners from around Europe working on the prevention of radicalisation. The aim of RAN’s Communication and Narratives (C&N) working group is to gather insights on both online and offline communication that 1.) offers alternatives to or 2.) counters extremist propaganda and/or challenges extremist ideas. The following is ...

by Haroro Ingram Countering Islamic State “strategic communications” is one of the most pressing national security concerns facing Western governments. Developing more nuanced understanding of the organization’s communications strategy will be crucial to devising effective counter-narrative strategies. Yet popular commentary tends to explain the appeal of Islamic State messaging by pointing to its graphic violence, use ...

by Helen Vatsikopoulos   At the ongoing coronial inquest into the deaths arising from last year’s Lindt café siege in Sydney, experts cannot agree whether Man Haron Monis was a radicalised terrorist or a mentally unstable lone wolf who used radical Islam as a “crutch”. Throughout the inquest, prosecutors, solicitors and detectives are being grilled ...

by Clint Watts A month ago, the Washington Post published the most insightful article to date on the challenges the U.S. government has encountered battling al Qaeda, the Islamic State and jihadis writ large in social media.  The U.S. State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) has been charged with a mission impossible: countering jihadi ...

Millions of Euro are being pumped into producing online content aimed at preventing young people from being drawn into extremist activities via the Internet, especially via social media content consumption and interaction. Orla Lehane, a PhD candidate at Dublin City University’s School of Law and Government, is utilising Grounded Theory methods to explore whether on ...

by Philip Seib The State Department is trying hard to counter online propaganda from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The information battleground includes Twitter and video messages, terrain that ISIL knows well. In addition to having too little money and too few people, the department is forced to conform to federal rules requiring that its ...