Legitimising jihad now takes more than words

One of the findings of our recent ESRC-funded project on media and radicalisation is that a shift has occurred in the way violent extremist or 'radicalised' jihadists justify suicide bombings. Around late 2007, as we begun the research, the most credible and authoritative figures in the eyes of online jihadist members were those with impressive rhetoric, grasp of religious scripture, and a place at the top of the Al-Qaeda hierarchy. Bin Laden and Al-Zawarahiri were the big draws. But the lack of action from Al-Qaeda itself, particularly the failure to act against Israel during the conflict with Gaza in December 2008, undermined these leaders' support. By early 2009 we found popularity was shifting to jihadist members themselves who stopped posting, went 'offline' and swapped virtual, rhetorical warfare for the 'real' battle, dying in the field. A new article in Foreign Affairs gives some examples of this. Does this make counter-measures against jihadists more difficult? If credibility and authority now come from deeds rather than words then this creates a more diffuse threat because any of jihadist supporter around the world may see an opportunity for glory and superstardom. But is a more diffuse threat necessarily a greater threat? Is security policy going to be driven by (intelligence) data confirming there is a pool of people actually willing to blow themselves up, or will it be dictated by the possibility that there might be? 

Call for PhD applications

Royal Holloway’s Department of Politics and International Relations welcomes applications and enquiries from potential PhD candidates interested in research topics covered by our faculty. This includes those wishing to apply for doctoral study in a field of research relevant to the New Political Communication Unit. We have a number of funding opportunities for Home/EU students. The deadline for applications is 15 March 2010.  For further information please see:

 http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Politics-and-IR/studying/Postgraduate_Research.html#Apply

2010-03-29: Andrew Chadwick and James Stanyer presenting at UK Political Studies Association Annual Conference

Andrew Chadwick (Royal Holloway) and James Stanyer (Communication and Media, Loughborough University) will be presenting a paper, "Political Communication in Transition: Mediated Politics in Britain’s New Media Environment" at the UK Political Studies Association's 60th Anniversary Conference at Edinburgh, March 29-April 1, 2010.

The paper is part of a panel on "New Media and Democracy" sponsored by the PSA's Media and Politics Section.

The final schedule is due to be published in January 2010.

MSc New Political Communication now recruiting for September 2010 entry

For those seeking to understand the interplay between digital new media and communication technologies, political institutions, behaviour and public policy, with emphases on citizen engagement, mobilization, campaigning, and the role of new media in the global system. Covers e-democracy, e-government, e-campaigning, citizen journalism, new media, war, and conflict. The MSc Stream, one of the several taught as part of the Department of Politics and International Relations' Masters programme, combines specialisation in the area of New Political Communication with the flexibility to choose from a wide range of optional courses. A 10-12000 word supervised dissertation is written over the summer. Teaching is conducted in small group seminars, supplemented by individual tuition for the dissertation.

For further information and to apply online visit the MSc New Political Communication page.

Your political views matter (and we will pay you for them)

An announcement from the Royal Holloway Press Office regarding PIR colleague Dr Nicholas Allen's research project on political ethics. Please direct all enquiries to Ruth Yeoman at the email address below.
---------
A team of researchers based at Royal Holloway and the University of Essex wants volunteers to participate in two focus groups exploring expectations of elected representatives (e.g. local councillors and MPs). No particular knowledge of politics is necessary, nor is any prior experience of having taken part in a focus-group activity.
We will offer participants £30 each for taking part in one 90-minute session (7.30pm): either Wednesday 13th Jan at the Coronation Memorial Institute (CMI) in Sunningdale or Wednesday 27th Jan at Royal Holloway College. Refreshments will be provided. We would particularly like to welcome over-40s to the RHUL focus group, but others are welcome to indicate their interest.
The research is being conducted as a part of an academic project funded by the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council. If you are interested in taking part, please contact Ruth Yeoman by email – R.Yeoman@rhul.ac.uk – or by telephone – 01344 625872, and you will receive more details.
Please indicate your age, how you rate your existing knowledge of politics (i.e. whether you know a great deal or not) and your occupational status.
 
Message Email:
R.Yeoman@rhul.ac.uk

 

The 2010s: Shaping the context and culture of the next decade

In a rare moment of clarity during the 2006 World Cup, lothario comedian columnist Russell Brand wrote, ‘The World Cup is now all around us, it is the context in which we exist.’ For a few weeks in England at least, media attention and many people’s everyday conversations, hopes and fears revolved around the fortunes of a doomed team. Now we enter a new year featuring a general election and another world cup, two media events and contests to grip the nation, each providing a barometer against which to measure any minor incident (“How will it affect Cameron’s ratings?” “How will it affect Rooney’s fragile state of mind?”). But the end of a decade affords the chance to step back and see the larger contexts within which such events play out. In the noughties, at the peak of the war on terror, policymakers and commentators (though not citizens) understood events in terms of security. Travel, economic transactions, schooling, multiculturalism -- how could these be modified to stop terrorism? More than that, a focus on security led to a different way of thinking about humanity. The point of politics became to secure what is necessary for human survival: food security, energy security, water security, information security, infrastructure security. If the 1990s was about delivery, post-ideological governments delivering the fruits of peace and prosperity after the Cold War, then the 2000s were about security -- securing what we assumed could be delivered. Rogue states, terrorists, pirates, cyberthieves, SUV drivers and irresponsible bankers threatened to destroy economy, social fabric, and environment.

 

The contextualization of politics is most evident at the level of culture. I am a closet book review addict, seeking out any radio show, magazine or journal discussing new books. Only in the last year has climate change become the primary context of discussion. Whether the books are about science, history, or even the arts, at some point the commentator will ask, “so what does this mean for climate change?” Or, “does this book make us think differently about our relation to nature?” The link may be tenuous, but there seems an expectation that this context must be acknowledged. It is through culture that a society represents itself to itself, and society chose a new metaframe in 2009: we are a people concerned for the planet.

 

What context will be used to make sense of events through the 2010s? Should climate change be the frame through which we understand the rise of China or a transformation of our economies? Will politics in 2020 still be about securing what we have and making us ‘resilient’ to imagined future threats? And can we explain the struggle to define the context of our times rather than just explain how politics works within that context? Old questions, new times, best wishes all for 2010. 

CfP Strategic Narratives @ SGIR Stockholm 9-11 Sept 2010

Section for Pan-European IR Conference, Stockholm, September 2010

World politics has always been the subject of lay and academic stories. While interest in the storying of international politics has recently intensified, as has the general interest of IR in narrative theory, the epistemological status of narrative remains disputed, as does its political significance in specific contexts. Recent examples, such as NATO's view of the “battle of the narrative” as an essential enabler of military strategy, or the “global war on terror” as an enduring, morally saturated story, indicate divergent understandings of both narrative and strategy. In more instrumental perspectives, strategic narratives are formulated by states with the express purpose of influencing the foreign policy behaviour of other actors; in contrast, hermeneutical approaches see strategic narratives as sense-making devices and structured repositories of national history and identity. On the basis of these definitions, this section seeks to stimulate theoretically informed and conceptually precise debates on strategic narratives.

 

We invite paper submissions for three panels with set themes, and further proposals for full panels and/or papers.

 

I. Paper submissions are invited for the following three panels:

1. Narratives of Globalization - we invite papers that engage critically with Colin Hay and Ben Rosamond’s “logic of no alternative” and “economic imperatives” – Hay and Rosamond have confirmed their participation to the panel;

2. Narratives of Integration – we invite papers that engage critically with Frank Schimmelfennig’s concept of “rhetorical entrapment” as a strategic narrative – Schimmelfennig has confirmed participation to the panel.

3. Narratives of Crisis – we invite papers that discuss from a strategic narrative perspective the reaction to the financial and economic crisis

 

II. Panel and paper proposals are invited that engage strategic narratives from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The following issues are of particular interest:

- Theorising strategic narratives

- Narratives of security: e.g. the "GWOT", the "new Cold War", the "clash of identities", or the "return of geopolitics".

- Narratives about strategy: how do actors story their strategies - for war, surveillance, intervention, migration, or integration?

- Narratives with strategic impact: how are stories used to shape contexts of international politics?

- Strategies of narration: who, how, where and to whom are the stories of international politics told?

- Narratives of identity;

- Methodological and epistemological issues in the study of strategic narratives

 

Section Convenors

Felix Ciută, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

Email: f.ciuta@ssees.ucl.ac.uk

Alister Miskimmon, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London

Email: Alister.Miskimmon@rhul.ac.uk

Ben O'Loughlin, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London

Email: Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk

Communicating Terror at PSA 2010

The Political Studies Association annual conference for 2010 will be held in Edinburgh on 29 March - 1 April. Ben O'Loughlin will take part on a panel 'communicating terror' organised by Piers Robinson at the University of Manchester. Combining arguments from the forthcoming book on Diffused War (with Andrew Hoskins) and the NPCU's work on strategic narratives, the paper will examine how different actors are getting to grips with communication nearly five years on from the 7/7 London bombings.

At the time, digitization was creating dynamics of emergence; a residual contingency due to the potential for images and other media content to emerge at unforeseen times to disrupt settled narratives. The BBC invited a deluge of mobile phone images on the day of 7/7, but also faced the prospect of 'counter'-images or evidence later emerging that would contradict the narrative emerging on the day of the attacks (creating problems that BBC World's Nik Gowing has explored). Recently, political leaders’ strategies have switched from directing information flows to harnessing the ‘flux’ of user-generating content around terrorism. But will control of the diffuse simply generate another set of dynamics?

 

Online Interpersonal Communication, Accidental Exposure and By-Product Political Learning During the British General Election of 2010: A Study of Twitter.

My colleague, Dr Oliver Heath, and I have today submitted a proposal to the "full application" round of the Leverhulme Trust's Research Projects Grant competition (the deadline is December 1; the "outline application" was submitted in June 2009). A brief synopsis is below. If you're working in the area of Twitter and politics, or are considering a project in this area and would like more information regarding our theoretical framework, research questions, and hypotheses, contact me by email: andrew.chadwick@rhul.ac.uk.

Online Interpersonal Communication, Accidental Exposure and By-Product Political Learning During the British General Election of 2010: A Study of Twitter.

We know very little about how the internet now shapes political behaviour in Britain. Most of what we do know comes from valuable empirical political science funded during the early 2000s. But since then, citizens’ online political habits and the nature of the internet have both changed dramatically, with the now well-established shift toward greater interactivity and interpersonal communication through online social network sites and web 2.0 services. This project will empirically explore the contemporary internet’s effects on political engagement by focusing on interpersonal communication, accidental exposure, and by-product political learning. To do so, it will examine parliamentary candidates’ and the public’s behaviour on Twitter—the most intriguing, controversial, and fastest growing online social network service in the UK to date—during the general election of 2010. The project will explore the general role and function of Twitter in British political communication, but most importantly it will assess the extent to which the serendipitous nature of web 2.0 online environments increases levels of accidental exposure to political information. It will identify the extent to which interpersonal communication creates accidental exposure that may or may not lead to by-product political learning and political engagement, including voting.

Studying political communication in a diffuse interpersonal environment like Twitter has many advantages, but it also presents significant methodological challenges. We seek to overcome these through a research design incorporating a novel, nonintrusive, natural experiment. Multivariate statistical analyses, including multiple regression (with lagged variables), simultaneous latent class analysis and structural equation modelling, will be used to test hypotheses about direct exposure and accidental exposure to candidates’ messages and by-product learning about politics, relative entertainment preference, political interest, political efficacy, and political engagement (including voting), and other salient variables.

2009-11-30 NPCU Sydney workshop on Media & Multiculturalism

The NPCU will run a workshop on 30 November and 1 December 2009 at the University of Western Sydney examining how news and drama contribute to multicultural life, based on audience research in the UK and Australia. The workshop includes a special focus on the acclaimed SBS drama, East West 101.

The event is in partnership with SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), CCR (Centre for Cultural Research) and CRESC (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change), and funded by Royal Holloway's Research Strategy Fund. For further information contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.