COUNTERTERRORISMPublic-Facing Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication Campaigns

The Situational Threat and Response Signals (STARS) project responds to the challenge of how to communicate effectively with the public about terrorism risks and threats in an increasingly complex and fragmented information environment. The ‘STARS framework’ helps practitioners to ensure that all the main elements and tensions potentially ‘in play’ are being considered in public-facing counter-terrorism (CT) strategic communication campaigns, with corresponding options for actions and techniques to tackle common problems.

The study’s main finding is that how campaigns are ‘read’, is influenced by a range of ‘situational’ factors. Understanding what these are and how they interact with campaign communications assets, can help to make them more effective while minimizing unintended consequences. The research provides practitioners with a step-by-step framework to this effect, included at the end of this report.

The study started with a broad multi-disciplinary review of academic literature, available here.

Our literature review identified a wide range of intersecting variables that impact on the strategic communication process, providing a strong foundation for the subsequent primary data collection phase of the project.

We centered the rest of our data gathering around three UK CT campaigns: See it, Say it, Sorted (SiSiS), Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) and Security On Your Side (SOYS). Taking a view that context is likely to matter, we included a comparative angle through attention to different (urban and rural) parts of the UK: England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

We analyzed the campaigns in four ways:

1. A ‘frame analysis’ studying the visuals and language of campaign assets;

2. 20 in-depth practitioner interviews exploring the campaign materials and their use ‘in context’;

3. 7 Focus groups including 52 members of the public. Specific assets from the three campaigns were discussed and used as a starting point for wider conversation about terrorism and CT interventions;

4. Social media analysis of reactions and engagement towards the campaigns, where data was available.

If a Campaign is the Answer, What is the Problem?
The key problem that campaign delivery teams encounter in their practice is constructing a ‘normal’ terror threat, without it tipping into fear mongering, or becoming so normalized that people disengage. At the same time, campaign messaging needs to highlight particular features (e.g., unattended bags) that should signal to people that there is a need to be alarmed, in order that they decide to act.