Discourses on countering violent extremism: the strategic interplay between fear and security after 9/11

ABSTRACT

This article explores the construction of extremism in media discourse, the factors driving specific constructions and the implications of these constructions for counterterrorism policy. We contend that extremism has predominantly and increasingly been framed as a security issue. This article explores the implications of this practice through the framework of securitisation. We measure the average intensity of security framing in 38,616 articles found in three major US newspapers, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, between 20 January 1993 and 19 January 2017 comprising the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, and look at factors influencing the shift in intensity over time. Through our analysis, we show that it is possible to return to a pre-9/11 discourse but that the confluence of real-world events and the strategic choices of political actors have so far prevented this from fully occurring. We then explore the effect of securitisation on public perceptions of the threat from terrorism, finding that increases in the intensity of security framing artificially increases the public’s worry about becoming a victim of terrorism. We conclude by discussing implications for the communication of counterterrorism policy and the requirements for an after, after 9/11 approach

KEYWORDS:

• Extremism
• counterterrorism
• news framing
• public opinion
• securitisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For example, the framing of Democrats as “social extremists” and Republicans as “religious extremists”.

2. The Brennan Center for Justice provides a thorough overview of this literature, ultimately concluding that “while purportedly aimed at rooting out all violent extremism, [CVE programs] have previously focused only on Muslims, stigmatizing them as a suspect community. These programs have further promoted flawed theories of terrorist radicalization which lead to unnecessary fear, discrimination, and unjustified reporting to law enforcement” (Brennan Center for Justice 2015, para. 2). These issues and concerns have only been exacerbated with the advent of the Trump administration and their explicit shift from “violent” extremism to “Islamic” extremism (Ainsley, Volz, and Cooke 2017).

3. The highest circulation paper, USA Today, was not selected due to data collection limitations.

4. It is worth noting that while the explicit biases of these papers are as mentioned, there is mixed evidence, at best, that these explicit biases are reflected in the non-editorial content of each paper.

5. If there are no mentions, then the score is by definition zero.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benjamin K. Smith

Benjamin K. Smith is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara, where he studies public opinion and media communication. He is also a Graduate Research Assistant at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, where he studies the typology of frames used by media organisations when discussing terrorist actors and the effects of these frames on public attitudes and beliefs about terrorist organisations and the threat of terrorism. He earned his M.S. in Communication from Portland State University in 2014 and his B.S. in Communication from Southern Utah University in 2012. Benjamin’s research focuses on three overlapping areas: (a) how the media constructs reality and why certain constructions are chosen over others, (b) the factors influencing the way media messages are perceived and processed by individuals and (c) the effects of these varying media constructions, in concert with personal and social factors, on the formation, updating and expression of beliefs, attitudes and opinions. In addition to his interests in public opinion and media communication, a sizeable portion of his work has focused on research methods, with the goal of encouraging a more robust foundation for the development of social science theory.

Michael Stohl

Michael Stohl is a Professor of Communication, Political Science and Global Studies, and Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Michael’s research focuses on organisational and political communication with special reference to terrorism, human rights and global relations. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 16 books and more than 100 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. He has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the International Communication Association Applied/Public Policy Research Award for career work on State Terrorism and Human Rights in 2011 and the International Communication Association 2008 Outstanding Article Award for Stohl, C. and Stohl, M. 2007, “Networks of Terror: Theoretical Assumptions and Pragmatic Consequences” Communication Theory 47,2: 93–124.

Musa al-Gharbi

Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University and the managing editor for Heterodox Academy. Prior to joining Columbia, he was an instructor in Government and Public Service at the University of Arizona South and the managing editor for the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC). He has an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University, along with an M.A. in philosophy and a B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona. His primary research areas include the sociology of knowledge, cognitive sociology, social psychology and applied social epistemology – applied across a range of subject matters including terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, race and inequality, social movements and, more recently, US political elections and the enterprise of social research. His work has been featured or published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Washington Post, Times of London, Times Higher Education, The Atlantic, New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Al-Jazeera and many other outlets and has been cited in academic journals and textbooks in a range of disciplines.