The dark side of political marketing: Islamist propaganda, Reversal Theory and British Muslims

The purpose of this paper is to discuss exploratory research into the perceptions of British Muslims towards Islamist ideological messaging to contribute to the general debate on "radicalisation". Four focus groups were undertaken with a mixture of Bangladeshi and Pakistani British Muslims...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of marketing 2010-01, Vol.44 (3/4), p.478-495
Main Authors: Baines, Paul R., O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas J., Moloney, Kevin, Richards, Barry, Butler, Sara, Gill, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Extremism
Islam
Islamism
Market strategy
Marketing
Militancy
Muslims
Negative campaigning
Political activism
Political advertising
Political theory
Propaganda
Society
Statistical analysis
Studies
Suicide bombings
Terrorism
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The purpose of this paper is to discuss exploratory research into the perceptions of British Muslims towards Islamist ideological messaging to contribute to the general debate on "radicalisation". Four focus groups were undertaken with a mixture of Bangladeshi and Pakistani British Muslims who were shown a selection of Islamist propaganda media clips, garnered from the internet. The paper proposess that Islamist communications focus on eliciting change in emotional states, specifically inducing the paratelic-excitement mode, by focusing around a meta-narrative of Muslims as a unitary grouping self-defined as victim to Western aggression. It concludes that British Muslim respondents were unsympathetic to the Islamist ideological messaging contained in the sample of propaganda clips. The paper provides an insight into how British Muslims might respond to Islamist communications, indicating that, while most are not susceptible to inducement of paratelic-excitement, others are likely to be, dependent on which genre of clip is used, the messages contained therein, and who that clip is targeted at.
ISSN:0309-0566
1758-7123
DOI:10.1108/03090561011020543