Fighting Violent Extremism With Narrative Intervention: Evidence From a Field Experiment in West Africa

Abstract

Violent extremism is one of the major challenges of our time. A cluster-randomized controlled trial with two arms (treatment vs. control) conducted in 132 villages in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso (N = 2,904 participants) examined whether a narrative intervention in the format of a radio drama can shift behavioral intentions, beliefs, and attitudes in contexts of violent extremism. Individuals in intervention villages participated in weekly listening sessions to the radio drama (6 months’ content) over 12 weeks. Compared with the control condition, the narrative intervention reduced justification of violence, increased behavioral intentions to collaborate with the police, and increased prioritization of addressing violent extremism. The intervention did not influence beliefs about or attitudes toward the police (e.g., trust, fairness) or beliefs about police–community collaboration. Content analysis of the narrative intervention and participants’ reception and discussion of the intervention provide insights on the processes driving the intervention’s influence.

Keywords

violent extremism narrative intervention media field experiment edutainment open materials

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aldrich

D. P.

(2012). Radio as the voice of God: Peace and tolerance radio programming’s impact on norms. Perspectives on Terrorism, 6(6), 34–60.

Arias

(2019). How does media influence social norms? Experimental evidence on the role of common knowledge. Political Science Research and Methods, 7, 561–578.

Bandura

(1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice Hall.

Bilali

Vollhardt

J. R.

(2013). Priming effects of a reconciliation radio drama on historical perspective-taking in the aftermath of mass violence in Rwanda. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 144–151.

Bilali

Vollhardt

J. R.

(2015). Do mass media interventions effectively promote peace in contexts of ongoing violence? Evidence from Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(4), 604–620. https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000124

Bilali

Vollhardt

J. R.

Rarick

J. D. R.

(2017). Modeling collective action through media to promote social change and positive intergroup relations in violent conflicts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 68, 200–211.

Blair

Littman

Paluck

E. L.

(2019). Motivating the adoption of new community-minded behaviors: An empirical test in Nigeria. Science Advances, 5(3), Article eaau5175. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau5175

Bruner

(1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press.

Buchanan-Clarke

Lekalake

(2016). Violent extremism in Africa. Public opinion from the Sahel, Chad, and the Horn (Afrobarometer Policy Paper No. 32). Afrobarometer. https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Policy%20papers/r6-afropaperno32-violent-extremism-in-ss-africa-en.pdf

10.

de Graaf

Sanders

Hoeken

(2016). Characteristics of narrative interventions and health effects: A review of the content, form, and context of narratives in health-related narrative persuasion research. Review of Communication Research, 4, 88–131.

11.

Finkel

S. E.

McCauley

J. F.

Neureiter

Belasco

C. A.

(2021). Community violence and support for violent extremism: Evidence from the Sahel. Political Psychology, 42, 143–161.

12.

Gau

J. C.

(2014). Procedural justice and police legitimacy: A test of measurement and structure. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 39, 187–205.

13.

Green

Wilke

Cooper

(2020). Countering violence against women by encouraging disclosure: A mass media experiment in rural Uganda. Comparative Political Studies, 53, 2283–2320.

14.

Greitemeyer

(2011). Effects of prosocial media on social behavior: When and why does media exposure affect helping and aggression? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 251–255.

15.

Human Rights Watch. (2020, January 6). Burkina Faso: Armed Islamist atrocities surge. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/06/burkina-faso-armed-islamist-atrocities-surge

16.

International Crisis Group. (2017, October 12). The social roots of Jihadist violence in Burkina Faso’s north (Report No. 254/Africa). International Crisis Group. https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/burkina-faso/254-social-roots-jihadist-violence-burkina-fasos-north

17.

Kruglanski

A. W.

Bélanger

J. J.

Gunaratna

(2019). The three pillars of radicalization: Needs, narratives, and networks. Oxford University Press.

18.

Kruglanski

A. W.

Gelfand

M. J.

Bélanger

J. J.

Sheveland

Hetiarachchi

Gunaratna

(2014). The psychology of radicalization and deradicalization: How significance quest impacts violent extremism. Advances in Political Psychology, 34(Suppl. 1), 69–93.

19.

Le Roux

(2019). Responding to the rise in violent extremism in the Sahel (Africa Security Brief No. 36). Africa Center for Strategic Studies. https://africacenter.org/publication/responding-rise-violent-extremism-sahel/

20.

Mar

R. A.

Oatley

(2008). The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(3), 173–192.

21.

Murrar

Brauer

(2019). Overcoming resistance to change: Using narratives to create more positive intergroup attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 164–169.

22.

Paluck

E. L.

(2009). Reducing intergroup prejudice and conflict using the media: A field experiment in Rwanda. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 574–587.

23.

Paluck

E. L.

(2010). Is it better not to talk? Group polarization, extended contact, and perspective-taking in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1170–1185.

24.

Paluck

E. L.

Green

D. P.

(2009). Deference, dissent, and dispute resolution: An experimental intervention using mass media to change norms and behavior in Rwanda. American Political Science Review, 103, 622–644.

25.

Petraglia

(2007). Narrative intervention in behavior and public health. Journal of Health Communication, 12(5), 493–505.

26.

Polleta

Callahan

(2017). Deep stories, nostalgia narratives, and fake news: Storytelling in the Trump era. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5(3), 392–408.

27.

StataCorp. (2017). Stata statistical software (Version 15.1) [Computer software]. StataCorp.

28.

van Buuren

Groothuis-Oudshoorn

(2011). mice: Multivariate imputation by chained equations in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 45(3). https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v045.i03

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

2.04 MB