Online narratives for countering violent extremism

Abstract

Social media has played a key role in the rise of extremism. Extremists took advantage of these open and free platforms to promote their propaganda. At the same time, this was an opportunity for governments, religious institutions and civil society to create counter extremism narrative. Based on the framing theory, this study examines the way in which Sawab, Al-Azhar Observatory, and Taadudiya Facebook pages present their narratives, with the aim of developing characteristics for each of the narratives. This study adopts a quantitative research methodology through the content analysis of three campaigns conducted by the three senders. The analysis of the results highlights the similarities and the differences in the narratives and framing patterns of the three Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) campaigns under study. The findings show many similarities between the three types of narratives, but with important differences based on the ideology of the sender rather than the type of the narrative. Women role was missed in the frames of Al Azhar campaign, and the majority of Sawab content. They all used a formal tone but the threatening mood was visible in the governmental posts of Sawab. The youth actor is present in the civil society campaigns of Taadudiya, more than the religious institution campaigns of Al Azhar. These results clarify how the ideology of each sender affects the framing and the narrative. The type of the narratives answers the “What”, but the content analysis of the campaigns clarifies “How” each sender is delivering the message regardless of the type of the narrative. The small size of the sample affects the ability to generalize the results of the study. Moreover, the paid promotions on Facebook should be taken into consideration while evaluating the engagement rate of the posts. The researcher had no access to pages insights, this is why there was no separation between the paid reach and the organic one. On the other hand, the absence of the content analysis studies of the CVE campaigns affected the richness of the literature review of the study.