Practice Goals/Target Population
Violent extremism, or the enacting of violent acts with an ideological (such as political or religious) intent, can manifest in targeted assault, destruction of property, and terrorism. Violent radicalization is generally used to refer to the process in which a person or group adopts and accepts violence as an acceptable method to impose ideologies (Carthy et al. 2020; UNHCR 2016).
One way radicalization occurs is through narratives, or a recollection of events that tells a story to impose a sense of structure and purpose. In the case of violent radicalization, narratives that support violent extremist ideologies suggest that the group’s goals can be achieved only through violence against those they consider to be the out-group. Counter-narratives deconstruct and discredit the themes of dominant narratives by addressing the underlying logic and “countering” it. The goal of counter-narratives is to present individuals with an alternative, nonviolent social construction, to prevent violent radicalization. Counter-narratives can target any population that has encountered harmful and persistent narratives (Carthy et al. 2020).
Practice Components
Counter-narratives can follow many different techniques to dismantle existing stereotypes and implicit biases. One technique is counter-stereotypical exemplar. This form of counter-narrative relies on the exposure to forms of media that exhibit counter-stereotypical information to demonstrate examples that challenge the dominant narrative in the participant’s life. For example, Ramasubramanian and Oliver (2007) presented White students (who had negative implicit attitudes toward Black and Indian American individuals) with newspaper articles depicting counter-stereotypes following a media literacy video to combat negative stereotypes.
Another technique is persuasion. These types of interventions were designed to induce peripheral-route persuasion, which is when a participant is persuaded by a message—that is, cues besides the strength of the actual argument. For example, Cohen, Tal–Or, and Mazor–Tregerman (2015) had university students (who were against on-campus demonstrations) read a story with a counter-attitudinal protagonist to increase personal identification with the “other side” (Carthy et al. 2020).
One more technique is inoculation. Inoculation is an attempt to prevent radicalization through narratives by warning participants of a potential influential narrative, and then offering counter-arguments to the harmful narrative.
Practice Theory
Counter-narrative interventions are implemented through various techniques and therefore are based on many different social theories. One theory is media priming theory, which posits that a person’s perceptions of their environment is directly influenced by the media to which they are exposed (Riles, Funk, and Davis 2018). Counter-narrative techniques that demonstrate a member of an out-group acting in a prosocial way rely on media priming theory to influence the person’s opinions and challenge their previously held stereotypes. Another theory is the stereotype conflict model. This model suggests that a person’s hostile feelings toward outgroups are reliant on perceptions of warmth and competence. For example, a member of an out-group that is stereotyped as troublesome or incompetent is more likely to be the victim of hostile attitudes than if they were perceived as passive or gentle (Ramasubramanian and Oliver 2007). Counter-narrative interventions that present members of a stereotyped out-group in a non-stereotypical way are based on the stereotype conflict model.
