Differentiating Act from Ideology: Evidence from Messages For and Against Violent Extremism
Journal abstract
Although researchers know a great deal about persuasive messages that encourage terrorism, they know far less about persuasive messages that denounce terrorism and little about how these two sides come together. We propose a conceptualization that distinguishes a message’s support for an act from its support for the ideology underlying an act. Our prediction is tested using corpus-linguistic analysis of 250 counter-extremist messages written by Muslims and U.K. officials and a comparison set of 250 Muslim extremist messages. Consistent with our prediction, Muslim extremist and Muslim counter-messages show disagreement on terrorist actions but agreement in ideological aspects, while U.K. officials’ counter-messages show disagreement with both Muslim extremists’ acts and ideology. Our findings suggest that counter-messages should not be viewed as a homogenous group and that being against violent extremism does not necessarily equate to having positive perceptions of Western values.
- Journal : Negotiation and Conflict Management Research
- Author : Sheryl Prentice, Paul J. Taylor, Paul Rayson and Ellen Giebels
- Date : 2012
- Volume : 5(3)
- Pages : 289-306
- Link : https://goo.gl/wzCGMy