The framing of radicalisation in the Belgian societal debate: a contagious threat or youthful naivety?

ABSTRACT

Following the terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris and 22 March 2016 in Brussels, radicalisation has become the topic of lively debate in Belgium. However, little research has been done on the different perspectives which people use to communicate about radicalisation in Belgium. Therefore, an inductive framing analysis of 2,271 excerpts, taken from various newspaper articles, policy documents and social media, was performed to precisely reconstruct all the frames and counter-frames that are used to define the issue. The results were validated through seven interviews and two workshops with a variety of stakeholders (imams, youth workers, academics, journalists). This resulted in the reconstruction of four problematising frames and eight deproblematising counter-frames. In addition to presenting and illustrating these frames, this paper discusses how the framing analysis can help gain insight into the social construction of radicalisation in the wake of the 2015 and 2016 terrorist attacks.

KEYWORDS:

• Radicalisation
• framing
• inductive analysis
• social constructivism
• extremism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. If relevant, the background of the source of the citations will be clarified.

2. It applies for the rest of the paper that excerpts from the data are based on own translations of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by BELSPO [BR/165/A4/CONRAD].

Notes on contributors

Marie Figoureux

Marie Figoureux is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Media Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her project focuses on the framing of radicalisation, migration and multicultural society in the Low Countries.

Baldwin Van Gorp

Baldwin Van Gorp (PhD, University of Antwerp) is a Professor of Journalism at the Institute for Media Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses mainly on framing effects and the framing of societal issues, such as dementia, migration, and poverty.