“Frame, Fame and Fear Traps: The Dialectic of Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication”

Abstract

This paper explores the challenges and complexities navigated and negotiated in public facing counter-terrorism strategic communication campaigns. Informed by frame analysis of campaign assets, practitioner interviews and public focus groups, the discussion pivots around three high-profile UK public messaging campaigns. Building from Goffman’s theory of “normal appearances” and the established concept of a “frame trap”, the analysis identifies two further shaping tensions. A “fear trap” occurs when counter-terrorism messages seek to “outbid” other risks in order to capture public attention, thereby unintentionally creating the negative emotional reactions sought through acts of terrorism, or overly-reassuring messages that induce public disengagement. In contrast, a “fame trap” results from creating “too much” public awareness of terrorism, by using commercial marketing logics. In practice, frame, fame and fear traps overlap and interact across different contexts, and the analysis uses the concept of a dialectic of anomaly and normality to highlight implications for future scholarship and practice.

Terrorism involves the conduct or threat of violence as a communicative act, designed to induce fear, in pursuit of a political objective. Set against the backdrop of a growing number and diversity of acts of terrorism, an array of policy and practice responses, and counter-measures, have been designed and delivered to help mitigate and manage the impacts of terror attacks. One specific set of measures are public facing counter-terrorism (CT) strategic communication campaigns.

Reduced to “first principles,” strategic communication involves deliberate and purposeful messaging, organized and conducted to address specific goals and outcomes.¹ Werder² defines it as: “a set of deliberate and purposive communication activities enacted by a communication agent in the public sphere on behalf of a communication entity to reach established goals that are informed by multiple perspectives.” Public facing campaigns can thus be considered strategic communications, when they enact aspects of broader CT policy, using a variety of multi-media tactics and techniques to try and persuade and influence the behaviours, perceptions and attitudes of public audiences.³ In the CT space, strategic communication campaigns involve a series of messages, often with a common theme, communicated to the public via media or social media, with the purpose of reducing the risk, threat or impact of terrorism in some way. Different campaigns have focused on: (1) informing the public about terrorism risks and threats⁴; (2) engaging the public – promoting public vigilance and calls to action to help mitigate threats⁵; and (3) deterring potential perpetrators.⁶ These desired outcomes shape the content and framing of specific public-facing campaigns, as demonstrated below, but their impact and effects will always depend on how they play out in an evolving and increasingly “noisy” information environment. It is well recognised that strategic communication does not unproblematically flow in a linear “a to b” sender-receiver direction, but is countered, re-constructed, and negotiated by audiences who, to various extents, participate in its meaning-making.⁷ Consistent with which, the aims, ethics, and meanings of strategic communication in the public-facing CT arena have proven contentious.⁸ Audiences’ lived experiences, identities, social networks, histories of fraught community relations with government and policing and particular “signal events”, among many other factors, all inform how this form of messaging is interpreted by and acted upon by audiences.⁹

Whilst there has been some research on public communication about terrorism,¹⁰ compared with other aspects of the counter-terrorism apparatus such as policing and the military,¹¹ the role of strategic communication has been relatively neglected. This is despite a growing number of empirically driven studies harnessing the affordances of social media communications data about terrorism, to derive new and innovative perspectives.¹²

Such developments notwithstanding, this article establishes a more theoretically informed perspective on the role and functions of public communications in countering terrorism. Specifically, our approach integrates both the transmission (design and delivery) of messages and their reception (how messages are “read”, interpreted and understood by public audiences), in seeking to understand the overall impacts and effects of public facing CT strategic communication campaigns. This blending of message transmission and reception is innovative, inasmuch as many studies attend to either transmission¹³ or reception,¹⁴ reflecting deeper structural dynamics in the organisation of communication studies. The empirical data pertains to three UK CT campaigns: See it, Say it, Sorted (SiSiS), Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) and Security On Your Side (SOYS). For each campaign, we analyzed the visuals and text associated with the main messaging assets, to establish the particular “frames”¹⁵ used. These materials are augmented by 20 practitioner interviews and seven focus groups including 52 members of the public, conducted in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The practitioner interviews provide insights into how the different campaigns are designed and delivered, accounting for environmental differences. In contrast, the focus group data explores how such communications are received, in terms of audience interpretation and sense-making, and the influence of situational context.

The importance of situation and context in shaping processes of public interpretation and sense-making was central to Erving Goffman”s account of social order and “normal appearances”¹⁶ and his notion of the “frame trap”.¹⁷ While people tend to interpret and make sense of everyday life through expectations – organising frames – of normality learned from past experiences in social situations (“actual occurrences”), a frame trap refers to an inability to distinguish “normal” from “abnormal”.¹⁸ Frames of normality are closely tied to a sense of security, with Goffman arguing that social beings are attuned to positively frame and re-frame deviance as unthreatening. People can also find it hard to assess a situation, especially in everyday scenarios where situations or things that they would normally consider to be acceptable and “normal” are suggested to be abnormal or a cause for concern. As such, CT campaign messaging that highlights potential threats in everyday, normal places and situations, can risk causing a “frame trap”, essentially an inability for people to interpret, understand and engage with what is going on around them.¹⁹

Extending and elaborating the processes that induce the conditions for a frame trap, and applying these to the empirical data collected and analyzed on public facing CT strategic communication campaigns, leads us to identify two further concepts:

1. A “fear trap” arises when CT campaigns try to “outbid” other risks or even different types of terrorism. A core aim of terrorism is to instil fear, so when campaigns ratchet up their messaging to gain public attention they can unintentionally create the exact negative emotional reactions the agents of terrorism were aiming for. Achieving a balance between communicating enough fear to command public attention, whilst reassuring that the risk can be mitigated, is especially challenging in communities where conflict and terrorism is relatively “normal”.

2. Alternatively, promoting “too much” public awareness of terrorism can create a “fame trap”. This comes from trying to get attention and cut through in the crowded and noisy contemporary information environment. Additionally, publics are probably most receptive to CT messaging in the aftermath of “signal events”,²⁰ when it is actually required less, because they are more vigilant at that point.

Conceptualising the issues in this way surfaces some of the complex challenges to be navigated and negotiated when designing and delivering public facing counter-terrorism strategic communication campaigns. By describing these issues, and explaining their causes and consequences, we provide a way for scholars and practitioners to hypothesise and analyse the likely effects, trade-offs and mitigations to be made in this type of strategic communication. We demonstrate that public readings of CT campaign communications are strongly situational and dynamic. In an era where audiences are heterogenous and liable to interpret messages differently, with an array of channels for reaching different segments of the public, there are multiple possibilities for intended and unintended impacts and effects.

In seeking to interpret and make sense of these processes of social communication, we introduce the concept of there being a “dialectic of normalisation and anomalisation” that is used as a heuristic to unpick the potential influence and interaction of particular patterns of situational factors. In a more practical register, this could help policymakers and practitioners to be more sensitive and responsive to public information needs and concerns, whilst also ensuring public audiences are better informed about, and engaged with, the counter-terrorism cause.

The next section outlines the conceptual framework, followed by the methodology. Section four presents a frame analysis that deconstructs the three campaigns studied. Sections five and six focus on the empirical findings underpinning the theoretical proposition of a campaign dialectic, summarised in the conclusion.

Conceptual Framework: Normalisation and Anomalisation

Erving Goffman is best known for his high resolution studies of “the interaction order” – how people behave and organise their conduct when in the presence of others. In his essay “Normal Appearances”,²¹ Goffman attends to the ways aspects of the settings and situations in which interactions occur, conditions what people do. Specifically, he highlights that “normal” situations have an array of rituals, rhythms and routines associated with them, the performance of which is important for conveying the orderliness of the setting and situation. He also documents how and why breaches of this situated orderliness occur. As he describes it, people are routinely scanning their environments for indicators of risk or threat to the state of orderliness. These take two principal forms: signals of alarm based upon monitoring the conduct of others in the scene, picking up on cues that they may be troubled or concerned; whereas signals for alarm are experienced more directly as threat perceptions.

Goffman’s work had substantive influence on Innes’ empirical studies of signal crimes, signal disorders and control signals,²² and Vaughan’s “normalisation of deviance”²³ construct. Innes’ work on signal crimes contends that not all crime and disorder incidents impact upon and affect public perceptions and understandings of crime, order and safety. Instead, certain “signal events” have a defining influence upon how people, think, feel and act with regards to their safety, and what is and is not interpreted as normal across particular settings and situations. Terrorism incidents often function as signal events.

Vaughan’s “normalisation of deviance” concept introduces an important processual dimension to how threats and risks are perceived and processed. She empirically evidences how prevailing workplace cultures meant that NASA employees tolerated risk signals, thereby failing to interpret potential warning signals as indicators of a growing danger leading up to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. The point to be derived from both of these studies is that what is constructed as “normal” and what indicates risk is not stable or constant across social space and time. Rather, “normal” shifts and evolves. The evolving nature of normality impacts how people react to signals of risk, such that for example, an unattended bag in a transport setting may be considered strange and risky in one situation, and no cause for concern in another. This also indicates that narratives of social order and normality are often revised in response to life experiences that present “challenging meanings”.²⁴

Situations requiring deliberation on whether appearances are “normal” or not can lead to what Goffman labelled a “frame trap”.²⁵ Misztal²⁶ discusses the issue with particular resonance for the perception of normalised threat and risk, and the spillover for public vigilance:

“A frame trap means that what is “abnormal” is framed as “the real” and consequently, it is confirmed as "normal" (Goffman 1974:480). As people become suspicious of those indicators that ordinarily pacify them, long-term consequences of a frame trap can leave individuals unsure as to what is happening around them. A lack of capacity and resources to see or to combat incorrect interpretive frameworks leads people to attach wrong meanings to all occurrences”.

Thus, frame traps arise where signals of risk become too familiar, such that they are no longer interpreted as valid warning indicators. According to Altheide²⁷ this is pertinent to CT communication because of how narratives formulated by governments and media have served to “normalize the terrorist condition”. Indeed, according to Russell and Babrow,²⁸ narrative is, “the very process through which risk takes shape in human understanding and experience”. As Altheide²⁹ further elaborates, within this condition: “advertising, entertainment, and popular culture becomes taken-for-granted as a “normal form” of communication”. Consequently, not only do CT communication campaigns have to strike the right balance between normal and anomaly in communicating terrorism risks and threats in everyday contexts, they must also “fit” and be captivating enough to attract attention within this wider “promotional culture”.³⁰ Government communications of all kinds now compete in a public arena where strategic communication, advertising, marketing and public relations activities and techniques are routinely deployed. By adhering to the general professional and mediatised logics of strategic communications practice, in order to compete in the crowded information marketplace, these “normal communication” campaigns may lose their distinctive draw as signals of alarm and thus fail to capture public attention.

If normalisation is the way in which even unusual or alarming events and situations are made to feel familiar and acceptable, anomalisation is the process of highlighting specific seemingly “normal” ordinary events or situations as problematic and a potential threat. In this paper, we develop these concepts of normalisation and anomalisation and the interplay between them, to evidence their analytic purchase in understanding how and why public-facing CT strategic communications campaigns are envisaged to work. Ultimately, we claim that there is a “dialectic of normalisation and anomalisation” deployed in shaping and guiding how people perceive and understand potential terror attacks and threats.

Methodology

Three UK public facing CT campaigns were subjected to frame analysis, using Entman’s³¹ key framing schema to deconstruct their visual and linguistic messages and consider these against their intended effect (detailed further in below, section four). “See it, Say it, Sorted” (SiSiS) and “Action Counters Terrorism” (ACT) are well established, nationally delivered public facing counter-terrorism strategic communication campaigns across the UK,³² with slightly contrasting intended purposes. “See it, Say it, Sorted” (SiSiS) is a commuter-focused campaign led by British Transport Police and the Department of Transport. First deployed in 2016 it is still in regular and widespread use across England and is probably the most publicly familiar campaign. It has undergone several design refreshes and integrates visual and audio-based messages that are relayed extensively in transport settings. Analysis focused on 12 SiSiS campaign posters. Launched in 2017, the “Action Counters Terrorism” (ACT) campaign includes both video and print media assets, provided as a toolkit of resources for regional police communication teams, alongside customised locally produced messaging tailored from content supplied by Counter-Terrorism Policing. The frame analysis of this campaign focused on two extended videos and an accompanying set of micro videos, together with three posters. The same core message runs across all the assets – a “call to action” as part of a bigger community effort to “defeat” terrorism. When the research was conducted “Security On Your Side” (SOYS) was a brand new campaign led by the Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI, now the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA)), which had not yet been publicly released. It also had different aesthetics and driving logics than the other two campaigns. We analyzed five campaign assets depicting different urban scenes and typical urban protective measures, such as CCTV, security dogs, plain clothes police officers.

To enhance understanding of the intended and perceived impacts of the campaigns, the frame analysis methodology was triangulated with primary data from practitioner interviews and public focus groups (between February and July 2022). Understanding the intentions behind campaign design and content was informed by data from in-depth interviews with 20 experienced counter-terrorism practitioners (14 from England, 5 based in Northern Ireland and 1 based in Wales), each lasting around one hour. A snowball sampling strategy was employed whereby interviewees referred the researchers to others considered to have relevant interests and experience. The interviewees had a variety of professional roles, including: government security policy; policing/CT policing; CT advisory, intelligence, media and communications. The interview schedule covered the individual’s current role and working relationships; the design, logic and messages of particular campaigns; barriers and facilitators of effective public communication; contextual/regional impacts on the production, communication and interpretation of messaging/campaigns; areas of success or promise, and those in need of change.

We also conducted seven online focus groups, involving 52 members of the public. These crossed urban and rural/suburban areas: two in London, one in Yorkshire, two in Cardiff, one in Belfast, one in rural/suburban Northern Ireland. This mix of focus group locations was devised to positively engage with diversity of public perception, recognising the potential for different public perceptions of campaigns, shaped by demographic, location, and variable socio-political contextual factors in different parts of the UK³³ (Finch et al., 2004). Individuals were recruited through a fieldwork agency, using a sampling criteria reflecting the above factors. Participant age range was 18–74, with an average age of forty years old. There was a fairly even mix of males and females, a range of socio-economic groups, occupations, and family status. Younger adults and ethnic minority participants were present across multiple focus groups. However, in recognition of particular issues regarding the engagement of these groups with CT communication and interventions³⁴ there was one group where ethnic minority community members (London based) were specifically selected, and another group comprised only younger adults (18–25, Cardiff based).

Focus groups were facilitated by the Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator and lasted around 1.5 h. They covered two main areas: (1) discussion and reactions to posters from the three campaigns (“See it, Say it, Sorted” (SiSiS), “Action Counters Terrorism” (ACT), and “Security On Your Side” (SOYS); (2) general discussion on security risks and threats, terrorism and counter-terrorism interventions and their communication. So whereas the interviews focused more on the intentions behind campaigns, the focus group data speaks to how campaigns were interpreted and received.

Data from both interviews and focus groups as the primary qualitative data sources were transcribed in full, processed using thematic analysis techniques, and coded using the software package “Nvivo”. Coding followed an “open” and inductive logic, moving from “first order codes” assigned to salient elements in understanding the transmission or reception of CT campaigns (“units of meaning”³⁵) to “second order themes”³⁶ that captured recurring perceptions and/or linked codes together into wider themes.³⁷

The Campaigns and Their Frames

Frame analysis techniques were used to deconstruct each campaign’s visual and linguistic configuration, considering these features against how they are envisaged to work. The individual campaign frames and their notable components are presented and compared utilising Entman’s³⁸ key framing elements schema in Table 1. Entman asserts that understanding how an issue or object is being actively framed, can be systematically accomplished by examining six principal features (reflected in the left-hand column of Table 1).

Table 1. Campaigns and their frames.

Frame elements	SiSiS	ACT	SOYS
Primary and supplementary frames	1. Engagement 2. Informational – reassurance	1. Engagement 2. Informational – instilling public confidence to report	1. Informational – reassurance 2. Deterrence
Selection and Salience	Imminent threat Foregrounds threat to self Specific suspicious behaviours/threats “Us” and “Them”	Longer-term threat Threat to the community The “normality” of threat	Omnipresence of protective security measures (visible and invisible) to combat wide range of threats
Problem definition	Transport based terrorism	Community based terrorism	Public/crowded spaces
Causal interpretation	Malevolent others –”outsiders”	Malevolent others – “insiders”	Non-descript
Moral evaluation	Immoral “them” and moral “us” Reporting concerns is the right thing to do	Reporting concerns is the right thing to do – protects community	Police/security services are protectors of multicultural society
Treatment	Vigilance in transport settings Raise concern to authorities – partnership working	Critical observation of others in community Trust your instincts Community action Raise concern to authorities	Protective security measures Trust the physical, technological and people capabilities of security services

Visually all three campaigns frame the terrorism threat to be countered in terms of ordinary, routine and mundane settings (see Figure 1). This connotes that the risks of terror attacks are not to be understood as exceptional, but rather arise in normal circumstances. This reflects a reduction in complex “spectacular” plots compared with attacks closer in design and delivery to violent crimes.³⁹ As such, campaigns must persuade their audience to be alert to the possibility that the scenes and settings of their everyday lives potentially contain terrorism risks and threats.

Figure 1. Example assets from the three campaigns.

At the same time, each campaign also highlights specific aspects of these ordinary scenes that it wants the public to attend to. The substance of the threats is implicitly rather than explicitly rendered, for example, an unattended bag in the SiSiS campaign, and protective security measures found in urban environments in the SOYS campaign. The third component to the communications is highlighting specific counter-measures that affect the threat. For SiSiS and ACT these are behaviours or actions that members of the public can take, whereas in SOYS the action has been taken by the authorities. This reflects the practical application of communication theory, distinguishing between engagement messaging that seeks to prompt audience participation, from informational messaging that seeks to disseminate a “one-way” message.⁴⁰ Nonetheless, across the three campaigns there is a subtle interplay between highlighting situational anomalies that might indicate the presence of a risk or threat, whilst simultaneously emphasising the normal appearances of the overall scene.

Campaigns and Their Reception

All three campaigns framed terrorism threats in ordinary, routine contexts, making the point that – although rare – terror attacks arise in normal, rather than exceptional, circumstances. In messaging terms this involved a particular set of techniques designed to “normalise” the possibility of terrorism, by translating unusual or exceptional situations or objects into accepted and expected events or scenarios. The counter-point to normalisation in constructing a campaign message was an accompanying process of “anomalisation”, whereby ordinary events or situations are isolated and singled out as warranting potential concern.

Across the focus group discussions, varied opinions and perspectives were offered on the desirability, aesthetics and effectiveness of the different campaigns, and of CT strategic communication generally. This variety and diversity in public opinion underscores the challenges confronting those designing and delivering such campaigns. This notwithstanding, analysis of the empirical data informed by the principal concepts of normalisation and anomalisation does suggest some key patterns, regarding how specific facets of a communication induces an effect upon audience behaviour or perception.

“Fame traps”

Fame traps occur when different CT communications, “owned” and managed by different parts of government, essentially compete to be the most well-known, or “famous”. One way this occurs is through “habitualised normalisation”. For example, with the SiSiS campaign, the repetition of the core message has functioned to normalise it, increasing its familiarity and acceptance by the audience. Potentially, as a communications tactic this is particularly impactful when it is encountered in the same places and situations as part of individuals’ routines and everyday rituals, as it may lead to it being perceived as an almost intrinsic aspect of the situation.

That normalisation is an aim of public-facing CT strategic communication campaigns was confirmed in the practitioner interviews. A number of them talked about the importance of establishing and sustaining “the drumbeat” of CT messaging. Their perception was that in a crowded information environment, CT messages are competing for audience attention, requiring constant promotion to exert sufficient influence to make a difference. This logic has clearly underpinned the longstanding SiSiS and ACT campaigns. As one practitioner reflected regarding SiSiS:

“that frequency of messaging that you get on the trains and the fact that it’s almost like a jingle that everybody hears when they’re on the underground…in terms of it being a catchy campaign that people are aware of, yes, I think it has done that more than any of the campaigns…it’s almost like those, kind of, TV adverts that have the really catchy jingle that we all, kind of, know. So, yes, it does create an awareness to an extent but whether that awareness translates into action, yes, I’m not entirely convinced by that” (P10, England).

This extract neatly elaborates how the “drumbeat” to CT communications was seen as important. Equally important though is the equivocation about the ultimate impact that creeps into the concluding phrase. The SiSiS campaign was praised by practitioners for getting the campaign design “fundamentals right” (P9, England) – a clear, concise message and call to action, and a memorable slogan – and this was, overall, confirmed by focus group feedback. The fact that the train network policy is mandated to play the SiSiS audio announcements was considered paramount to its public traction. However, there was acknowledgement that its constant repetition could have an irritating effect, and it was also perceived as suffering from over-use, degrading its overall impact. Multiple comments from focus group participants highlighted how over-exposure was leading to them “tuning out”:

“it’s a bit irritating but I think maybe it’s because some of us hear it so often that it’s become virtually clichéd and it’s lost any, sort of, significant meaning because we hear it so often.” (London – Urban, Male, 50, White)

Such sentiments are consistent with the key dilemma encountered by advertisers in getting the right balance between “wear in” and “wear out” effects⁴¹ of repetitive advertising as a means of capturing audience attention.

Further, individual campaigns can have different brandings, different messages and calls to action, and employ various mediums of reporting, whilst occupying similar physical spaces and trying to reach the same end-user audiences. This risks diluting the potency of individual campaigns, and was reflected in focus group descriptions of being bombarded with so many materials it became hard to distinguish between them and engage with any one of them effectively. One practitioner explained this common sentiment:

“everyone wants to achieve the same thing, but we’re all doing it in slightly different ways and maybe that can be confusing…there doesn’t seem to be that kind of overarching narrative you know around it – everyone is telling slightly different stories” (P2, England).

There was acknowledgement among the practitioner community about the need to avoid their respective campaigns simply “outbidding” each other. There were repeated mentions of the insular and siloed nature of different elements of CT work and “protectionism” over the ownership of campaigns that often limited collaboration and the ability to speak with “one voice”. Despite this, there was a wider market logic informing practitioner views, with some advocating for the adoption of marketing approaches used by big commercial brands:

“you want to be Coca Cola on this stuff, or McDonald’s or whatever, you want to be hammering people with the same thing seven times a day, in seven different places and we don’t. We hammer them once a day and then they get a slightly different message the next day and then they get on the tube and that’s a bit different and then they might go to the O2 [arena] and see something a bit different there and it’s a shame”. (P11, England)

Adopting a more reception focused lens, the focus groups nuanced this view, pointing to the risks that competing recurring CT communications may actually switch off public engagement. There was a sense of saturation and overload resulting from the promotional culture, whereby a continuous stream of government information is lumped together and often dismissed:

“I think we get a little bit cheesed off with posters and signs, and what have you…It’s a bit like watching the television, as soon as the adverts come on, I pause the television or I mute it” (Cardiff – Rural, Male, 74, White).

Implicitly acknowledging this point, one practitioner made a wider point about how public facing CT strategic communication campaigns “sit” within the broader government communication environment, which collectively risked diluting public attention towards any of them:

“There’s a bigger question I think about the sheer number of things that we as government want to communicate to the general public – about Covid, and paying your taxes, and being security-aware, all of these things, there’s an awful lot in there and I think the government has high expectations of the public anyway, at least at the minute.” (P9, England).

At the same time, focus group discussions emphasised that CT campaign branding and presentation is important for public engagement. In particular, the ACT campaign posters generally didn’t generate strong engagement or highly emotive comments in either direction: “It looks quite dated. I don’t think it’s very creative with the design at all…it just looks a bit boring.” (Male, 19, White, Cardiff, Urban).

Image design was a concern for a number of contributors to the different focus groups. If materials were perceived as too complex or “arty”, it was harder to engage with the subject, especially in fast-paced environments such as commuting/public transport settings, as highlighted by this comment about the SOYS campaign: “it doesn’t really make me think of security and I think if, for example, these were to be in the Underground, and you’re walking past, I would think it was something to do with a market”. (London – Urban, Female, 24, Black). There was a fundamental tension between embracing normal, expected creative promotional techniques and marketing logics, and standing out as a distinct “signal” meriting attention. This is exemplified by the unconventional aesthetic design of the SOYS campaign. Whilst intending to be different from the expected “norm” for CT materials – at a quick glance without reading further – participants mistook them for tourism or advertising posters and discussed the “cognitive friction” (P15, England) that this created. Such feedback distils the potential risk to public engagement and campaign asset effectiveness in over-normalising the depiction of the setting.

“Fear traps”

A different way to cut through a saturated information environment is by integrating an element of shock or fear in CT campaign messaging, a strategy also often used in other contexts such as health.⁴² The “trap” here is that increasing the fear quotient may actually provoke the affective reaction – fear – that counter-terrorism is more widely seeking to prevent. In this respect, a common point of discussion among practitioners was that fear and shock tactics were risky in the CT realm. This was considered an authentic sensitivity, yet was perceived by several practitioners to be somewhat overplayed, largely due to political concerns. One practitioner explained:

“this is a bit more of a government view of, we don’t want to terrify the whole country into never going to the shops and never going to the cinema, and all the rest of it” (P9, England)

A few practitioners argued there was a productive role for fear and shock in CT messaging, using examples from analogous contexts, with one practitioner recounting the “Belt Up in the Back” road safety advert from the UK in the early 70s:

“At the time, there was a real debate about whether or not that should be permitted, because it was scaring people…Well, you can scare people and educate them at the same time. I think there are grounds to at least make them aware of… just how much threat is out there”. (P19, England)

Practitioners in Northern Ireland seemed especially attuned to whether a message “lands” with an audience (in terms of desired interpretation and engagement) or not, strongly influenced by local context and situational norms. Northern Ireland’s CT campaigns have historically been comparatively graphic in UK terms, to override the: “level of chaos and violence in Northern Ireland in certain communities that is just a way of life, for a lot of people, and it’s just not recognised as being anything out of the ordinary at all” (P20, Northern Ireland). However, the use of shock and fear was considered problematic, providing the basis for a “fear trap”:

“I think, over time, people become inured to things. So, what is really shocking to somebody in England maybe is less so to somebody here… I guess the problem is that, you know…the need to shock has to be above that, and then, as that shock wears off, then you have to go beyond it, you have to, kind of, elevate on each occasion and intensify” (P8, Northern Ireland).

In the Northern Ireland context, where terrorism and paramilitary violence has become familiar and fairly routine, enhancing the emotional impact of CT messaging was seen as necessary to get “cut through” and capture public attention. Even decades after the strikingly powerful earlier campaigns, that these are still the unprompted reference point in the focus groups for comparison, points to their effectiveness. That said, a number of those who had viewed such campaigns found them upsetting and disturbing. Conceptually, a “fear trap” describes getting locked into a dynamic of increasing the shock quotient of successive messages, just to sustain audience engagement. There was thus an understanding that the fear dial could not be exponentially increased without potentially (re-)traumatising audiences.

A second aspect of the way local context shapes audience reception and sense-making related to how in rural areas the CT threat message is perceived as so out of place that people were minded to ignore it. Participants across all focus groups tended to see terrorism threat as a more normalised part of urban, rather than rural settings, with London recognised as a particular hotspot prompting public vigilance: “I don’t think I would have that on my radar at all in Yorkshire. I think it’s a very, London-centric thing…tourist attractions, things that are perceived to be of value that you might want to blow up. You’re not going to target trees and “Help the Aged” [charity shop], are you? (London – Urban, Female, 29, White).

Further informing the fear trap concept is that when making judgements about whether perceived anomalies are legitimate causes for concern, individuals lean on high profile incidents in their sensemaking. Certain events can be “agenda-setting” on public perceptions of terrorism risks and threats – borrowing McCombs and Shaw’s⁴³ term for explaining how the media can prime and frame issues to influence their public salience. The Manchester Arena bomb was a singular signal crime that was mentioned in every focus group as particularly harrowing, given its direct targeting of “mums and their kids” (Northern Ireland – Rural, Female, 42, White) and as prompting vigilance in crowded places such as stadiums. The shared horror at this particular terrorism incident distinctly demonstrates how collective memory can crystallise, shaped by contemporary and retrospective co-constructed public discourse around the specific event and terrorism incidents more broadly. In Fine’s⁴⁴ work on “sticky reputations” he explores the ways destructive beliefs or behaviours of high-profile individuals or groups can become reputationally toxic, prompting peers and wider society to use them as anchors of moral sensemaking. Indeed, in focus group discussions, the Manchester Arena incident was consistently and vociferously condemned, even by those participants who talked more passively at times about other incidents of violence or sectarian acts of terrorism.

Public awareness of terrorism risks and threats is heightened during the wake of an attack, before a return to normality. Acknowledging this, practitioners felt that in the aftermath of a terror attack, campaign communications could be ramped up for better message cut-through, recognising that this gradually becomes more difficult with time: “it sounds awful, but capitalising on those moments after something has happened, when it’s in the public conscience, is really important” (P4, England). However, promotion of the CT message in the wake of attacks may be unnecessary when people are already attuned to the issue.⁴⁵ Indeed, focus group participants, particularly those in London, concurred that they felt most vulnerable and alert to risks during these times. Despite this, numerous participants were at pains to emphasise the perceived exceptional and unlikely nature of such events and their low risk of being directly impacted:

“I think we are all aware it’s really quite unusual and even though we see it happen in London the chances of you being involved in it are quite slim. So, I don’t think we go around, you know, in a state of fear” (London – Urban, Male, 43, White).

This concurs with Vaughan’s⁴⁶ explanation of how deviance can be tolerated and explained away when it is viewed as an “idiosyncratic incident” (p161).

The need to “localise” communication and make CT personally relevant to publics through audience and area segmentation, while at the same time not diluting the message that terrorism risks and threats are anywhere and ever-present, is a recurring tension for practitioners designing and delivering CT messaging campaigns.

The Impact of Wider Atmospherics: Trust, Crime, and Terrorism

Trust has a crucial conditioning influence on the reception of public facing CT strategic communication campaigns by different segments of the public. In the most basic terms, trust both shapes and is shaped by how a message is delivered and interpreted.⁴⁷ Trust is a means of responding to uncertainty in the face of vulnerability and risk⁴⁸ and as such, speaks to the idea of normalisation as it pertains to communication campaign assets.

“Normal” Crime, and Terrorism

Trust is critical to maintaining social order.⁴⁹ Trust that within one’s normal environment “all is well” is essential in enabling people to go about their daily lives without the constant guesswork Goffman suggests would otherwise be necessary in his concept of normal appearances. However, all the CT campaigns reviewed communicate that a terrorism threat may come from within one’s community, from a fellow citizen encountered in normal circumstances in everyday places. As Salerno⁵⁰ remarks, campaigns are therefore at once seeking to bond communities in order to look out for the collective good, and to break bonds of trusts so that the public is vigilant to internal threat. Speaking to a similar point, Taylor⁵¹ discusses how such a contradiction is rectified and official CT models endorsed, through tropes of good and evil, and mediated models of ideal citizen behaviour in ethically challenging scenarios (e.g. espionage), delivered through news coverage and film. This “insider” theme is particularly strong in the community focused ACT campaign. Both of these studies speak to the wider point made by Altheide⁵² that social order and control is increasingly mediated.

This tension has arguably become more potent given the diversification of terrorism attack methodologies. Practitioners discussed the problem of the public attending to well-known signals for alarm such as bombs, rather than “newer” attack vectors:

“in general, the public still thinks about terrorism as bombs rather than knives or lorries or cars. The public still has this big thing about unattended bags and all of that, which is not unhelpful, but isn’t often the reality that’s most important” (P11, England).

This may be due to the impact of particular signal crimes of terrorism using these methods which prime them in people’s minds. But focus group discussion also suggested that individuals seek to anchor their sensemaking around potential events and methodologies to avoid feeling overwhelmed by a sense of pervasive threat:

“I think a lot of people kind of suspend those thoughts of terrorism because they need to do things, they need to use the public transport, they need to do lots of things to facilitate their life. If they dwelled too much on the thought of a terrorist attack it would stop them from functioning.” (London – Urban, Female, 54, Asian)

Alongside this means of managing the pervasive sense of threat, focus group participants spoke of a shift towards more “insidious”, “smaller” acts of terrorism. These “smaller” acts of terrorism were talked about as “insidious”, because they were a break from what people had come to perceive as “normal” acts of terrorism. Mirroring this, both Northern Ireland focus groups discussed anxiety associated with the loss of “certainty” around the sectarian terrorism threat:

“before, we only had either a Protestant organisation that was planting a bomb, or the IRA planting a bomb. Now we have loads of cultures planting bombs, or shootings or stabbings. There’s a greater risk of terrorism now, I think…as we grew up, we sort of knew what was happening, now you don’t.” (Northern Ireland, Rural, Female, 52, White).

The Northern Ireland focus groups differentiated between local terrorism and “international” terrorism, implying a perceived lower gradient of severity to local acts. This reflects how normalisation can soften threat perceptions.

Related to the point about a pervasive versus localised sense of threat, was wider discussion around the security concerns that were more tangible, often directly or vicariously experienced through close others, and therefore more routinely in individuals’ minds. Knife crime, gangs, being out as a lone female at night, and avoiding those under the influence of alcohol or drugs were common concerns. For example, one individual explained:

“My main concerns are knife crime which it seems to be on the rise in recent years and thievery, that seems to be a big problem in London as well so just always trying to make sure my stuff is on me and safe rather than terrorism and stuff like that.” (London – Urban, Male, 25, Asian)

Practitioners accordingly discussed the positive benefits of a deliberate strategy to link crime and terrorism:

“there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the way to get people to care more about terrorism is to appeal to, kind of, broader concerns about crime. So, like, knife crime, of course, is much more prevalent than terrorism, as you might expect. I think the same principle should probably be applied to campaigns as well where possible”. (P9, England)

The challenge here is how best to steer public attention towards attending to and reporting more general social problems and crimes that may be more relevant to their everyday lives, whilst not overshadowing the terrorism risk altogether. For some evidence suggests that such a dual strategy would unintentionally result in counter-terrorism being prioritised over more subtle crime in the minds of the public and the actions of local practitioners (e.g. see Innes⁵³).

Normalised Distrust

The success of any such strategy – and CT campaign effectiveness more widely – will be impacted by the public’s trust in the messenger, and how government and the police are viewed by communities. This was discussed at length within both practitioner interviews and the focus groups. Levels of trust were considered to be problematically low, impacted negatively by high profile, lingering signal crimes. Traditional and social media was considered to inflame and sensationalise negativity around these issues and events, intensify distrustful counter-narratives, and spread misinformation and disinformation. Collectively this fed a degree of “normal” routine distrust towards authorities, which practitioners appreciated created a barrier for public engagement with their messaging.

Uncertainty about trust in the authorities was strongly evident across all the focus groups, expressed especially acutely by women, young people, ethnic minorities, and (in respect of social class and deprivation) male participants. In focus group discussions, participants also linked this to discontent with policing more widely: “My trust in the police for a “Sorted”, kind of, method has gone down just from hearing experiences from friends and family where the incident has happened, the police have come, they’ve done their investigation and then nothing.” (London – Urban, Male, 25, Asian). Notably, the Manchester Arena attack was distinctive in being used as an example of the ways in which members of the public perceive a disconnect between CT messaging and CT action, and how this mismatch has undermined public confidence and trust: “my initial reaction, when I saw that, ‘See it, say it, sorted,’ strapline, was to think of Manchester Arena, and how it was said, and not sorted, so there’s that lack of trust.” (Northern Ireland – Urban, Female, 54, White).

Relatedly, the SOYS campaign split opinion, with extensive talk about the surveillance apparatus depicted and very mixed interpretations of this, ranging from reassuring safety measure, to overly intrusive state control. There was also divided opinion about whether the campaign was intended to be reassuring to the public, or unsettling to would-be criminals and agents of terrorism (a mix of deterrence and surveillance). The vintage picture book style and the focus on all the protective measures in place also split views. Some participants responded positively to the twin track blending of reassurance and surveillance/deterrence:

“I think it’s really clever…it’s not only reassuring for a non-attacker if you’re just going about your life, but I do think that serves as quite a beautiful deterrent to know you’re being watched… there’s more control that’s being taken back in this image.” (London – Urban, Female, 29, White).

Other focus group members felt, however, that the aesthetics belied the intention, making it quite sinister: “I feel like it’s the sort of nicer way of saying, “we’re always watching,” sort of thing…like the wording, “we’re on your side” but realistically it is just sort of Big Brother.” (Cardiff – Urban, Male, 19, White). This summarises the delicate balance between reassuring and deterring, and how the interpretation of a campaign message is heavily informed by the situated levels of trust or distrust that the receiver places in the messenger. There is a risk that introducing ambiguity into this kind of messaging intensifies cynicism and distrust for those already that way inclined.

Conclusion: The Campaign Dialectic

Situated in an increasingly busy and “noisy” information environment, contemporary public facing counter-terrorism strategic communication campaigns are intrinsically paradoxical. They have to negotiate a series of tensions, as they seek to influence public perceptions and behaviour. Smith and Lewis⁵⁴ helpfully define a paradox as involving: “Contradictory yet interrelated elements (dualities) that exist simultaneously and persist over time; such elements seem logical when considered in isolation, but irrational, inconsistent, and absurd when juxtaposed.” For example, that a bag in a busy location is most of the time a normal unthreatening object, but should at the same time be considered a potential terrorism threat. Likewise, any public messaging on these themes has to convey that there are risks, but they are controllable, even though the history of terrorism attacks shows that not all such risks have been successfully controlled. For if risks were too “out of control” that would degrade trust and confidence in the state and its security provision.

There is then a complex web of tensions and contradictions to be negotiated, and trade-offs to be managed, where ultimately it is not “either, or”, but, “how much of each?”. It is because of the recurring presence of these tensions that we argue, in a more conceptual register, that contemporary public facing CT strategic communication campaigns are best understood as engaging a “dialectic of normality and anomaly”. The key problem campaign delivery teams encounter in their practice is constructing a “normal” terror threat, without it tipping into fear mongering, or becoming so normalised that people disengage. At the same time, campaign messaging needs to isolate and illuminate the anomalous features that should signal to people that there is a need to be alarmed, in order that they do react when needed. In addition, CT public-facing campaigns have to be sensitive and responsive to variable elements of public (dis)trust in authorities and localised sensemaking in respect of terrorism and security. These factors contribute to changeable individual and societal receptiveness to counter-terrorism messaging, which places an additional dynamic “pull” on the communicative dialectic.

In dealing with these challenges, the analysis has identified and defined two key “traps” that frustrate the design and delivery of public facing CT strategic communication campaigns. It is easy to be lured into a “fear trap” in terms of “outbidding” other risks, or even different terrorism types, but in the process inducing the emotional reactions being sought through acts of terrorism. Equally, balancing levels of reassurance against “enough fear” to command public attention is challenging. This is particularly problematic within those communities where terrorism is relatively “normal” and/or when audiences have been directly affected by terrorism, or routinely encounter violence and threat, running the risk that such messaging could be traumatic. Alternatively, a “fame trap” can result by promoting too much awareness of terrorism in the general population, just to achieve “cut through” amongst the “noise” created by other forms of promotional communication, including that from government. Additionally, there is the issue that publics are probably most receptive to CT messaging in the aftermath of “signal events”, when it is actually required less.

This dialectic of normalisation and anomalisation may be a defining quality of current public facing counter-terrorism strategic communication campaigns. Understood in this way, this paper adds to existing work that both problematises the normative role of strategic communication in contemporary democracies,⁵⁵ and the practical implications of communicating with diverse publics who have varying levels of “situational motivation” to help “solve” the terrorism “problem”.⁵⁶ Such findings are of course caveated by the parameters of data samples and timeframe. Further research is required to test and refine the principal claims in the evolving threat landscape, and across innovations to communication campaign assets and modalities. Nonetheless, the findings do suggest that getting the “right balance” for public facing CT strategic communication campaigns requires a double-movement. At the same time as highlighting the importance of local situations in shaping how CT messages are interpreted, the empirical evidence presented articulates some key patterns in terms of how campaigns are being designed and delivered. This has included documenting how such campaigns portray scenes and settings that are sufficiently normal that viewers will perceive them as relevant to themselves, whilst avoiding the problem of over-normalising the terror threat. Simultaneously, these same assets have to isolate and highlight the threat signal that they want members of the public to react to, should they see it in real life. It is by attending to this double-movement that some of the key complexities involved in contemporary CT public communications can be understood and addressed.

Disclosure Statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (ESRC Award: ES/V002775/1).

Notes

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