Humans of Extremism: The Academic Story
Understanding the framework of extremism in the media
Extremism is not a new challenge for democracies and human societies. As a concept, it has been a contested issue historically, oscillating between activism and populism.
Media frame extremism as political and/or religious component only. However, extremism is not limited to these concepts; it goes beyond. While creating a framework for our project, we relied on the scholarly explanation of the concept of extremism. We also reframed extremism as, “One person’s extremism is another person’s activism.”
In their study on populism, extremism and media, Alvares & Dahlgren (2016) recognize that the problem of media framing of extremism is slanted towards religious extremism. This framing of the media often colludes with the definition of violent extremism used by Ferguson (2016) and Pauwel et. al (2014) in their study. Ferguson (2016) explains ‘violent extremism’ as, “Activities (beliefs, attitudes, actions, strategies) of people who support or use violence for political, religious or other identity-driven beliefs. This includes terrorism and other forms of identity-motivated violence from hate crime to genocide.” (p. 4). While Ferguson focuses on the identity-motivated violence to frame extremism, she overlooks the idea that violent extremism could also be issue based. Bandopadhyay et al. (2015) discuss ideological extremism and the role of media in their study on manufacturing extremism. Although the authors term it as ideological extremism,their discussion does not get past the politics and political extremism. Bright (2016) too in his work focuses on political extremism and how leftwing and rightwing political parties operate in social media platforms to create an environment of extremism. So far, there has been limited consensus between scholars and journalists to define extremism.
In a study funded by UNESCO and edited by Singh et al. (2015), there are multiple versions of the concept of extremism in various European countries, “Norway defines it as activities of persons and groups that are willing to use violence in order to achieve political, ideological or religious goals;and Sweden defines a violent extremist as someone “deemed repeatedly to have displayed behaviour that does not just accept the use of violence but also supports or exercises ideologically motivated violence to promote something. In the United Kingdom, extremism is defined as the vocal or active opposition to fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs, as well as calls for the death of UK armed forces at home or abroad. In Denmark, extremism is used to describe groups that can be characterized by their simplistic views of the world and of “the enemy”, that reject fundamental democratic values and norms, and use illegal and possibly violent methods to achieve political/religious ideological goals.” (p. 13)
Ford (2017) writes a first-person account on how opposition to legitimate and shared values, could also make her a potential ‘extremist’. In her explanation, anyone could be an extremist who does not conform to the shared values. Ford, in her writing, asserts that the definition of extremist oscillates between ‘people with extreme political or religious views’ to an outlier of shared values.
The Media’s role should be to challenge the stereotypes of extremism and extremists but that is not the narrative that the media provides. We hope our project is able to break those stereotypes and provide a learning guide for the audience to critically think about extremism and extremists.
Reading List:
Alvares, C., & Dahlgren, P. (2016). Populism, extremism and media: Mapping an uncertain terrain. European Journal of Communication, 31(1), 46–57. Read here
Bandyopadhyay, S., Chatterjee, K., & Roy, J. (2015). Manufacturing extremism: political consequences of profit-seeking media. Read excerpt here
Bright, J. (2016). Explaining the emergence of echo chambers on social media: the role of ideology and extremism. Read here
Ferguson, K. (2016). Countering violent extremism through media and communication strategies. Reflections, 27, 28. Read here
Ford, K. (2017, July 18). The UK government thinks I am an extremist — and you might be one too. Retrieved July 27, 2017. Read here
Pauwels, L., Brion, F., Schils, N., Laffineur, J., Verhage, A., De Ruyver, B., & Easton, M. (2014). Explaining and understanding the role of exposure to new social media on violent extremism: an integrative quantitative and qualitative approach. Science and Society. Read excerpt here
Singh, J., Kerr, P., & Hamburger, E. (Eds.). (2016.). Reinforcing Human Rights, Countering Radicalization and Extremism. Retrieved July 27, 2017. Read here
