Distancing the extraordinary: Audience understandings of discourses of ‘radicalization’

Abstract

The term radicalization proliferated in official and media discourses in the UK in 2005 and has become an anchoring concept in debates about jihadist-inspired political violence. This article presents original research from an investigation conducted in the UK and France in 2008–09 to elicit how audiences understand the term and concept of radicalization from multi-methodological analysis of their ordinary language. As a contribution at the intersection of media and security studies, our analysis indicates that audiences are aware of official and media discourses of radicalization, and that they establish disjunctures between those discourses and their own understandings of the concept of radicalization. Critically, these disjunctures are found in the way people talk about radicalization: in their use of language rather than the content of arguments expressed. In establishing these disjunctures through ordinary news talk, audience members position themselves as not-your-typical-viewer, making presumptions about other members of the same audience to which they belong. This supports Scannell's theorization of mass media as for-anyone-as-someone structures, through which individuals are able to articulate their own sense of difference and identity.

Notes

1. This article draws on research undertaken under the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Programme ‘New security challenges: “Radicalisation” and violence – a critical reassessment’ (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/nsc/). The project was entitled: ‘Legitimising the discourses of radicalisation: political violence in the new media ecology’, Award Number: RES-181-25-0041, led by Andrew Hoskins (University of Warwick) and Ben O'Loughlin and Akil Awan (both Royal Holloway University of London). See http://www.newmediaecology.net/radicalisation/.

2. Legitimising, Interview JE & JDB, line 80. All names have been anonymized.

3. FB is a 42-year-old Franco-English male who lives in London and who works as a fundraising manager for a children's charity. Politically, he describes himself as a liberal and religiously, as an atheist.

4. Legitimising, Interview FB, lines 153–6.

5. Legitimising, Interview LD, lines 342–9. LD is a 23-year-old female who lives in France and who studies education science and fine arts. Politically, she considers herself as belonging to the left and religiously, she is an atheist.

6. Legitimising, Interview YD, lines 194–205. YD is a 26-year-old male who lives in France, of Polish and Italian descent, and who is unemployed. Politically, he is a liberal but without strong commitments to specific ideologies; religiously, he is an atheist.

7. Legitimising, Interview MR, lines 90–7.

8. Legitimising, Interview MR, lines 98–101.