ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an aesthetic understanding of communication and countering violent extremism (CVE) in the contemporary media ecology. This framework advances the study of CVE beyond a qualitative analysis of narratives and toward a focus on how people interpret, make sense of, and feel emotions toward the world. The chapter focuses upon important work that has found that aesthetic media such as images are integral to people’s understandings, emotions, and beliefs about events and issues in world politics. It argues that scholars of violent extremism and CVE should pay attention not only to narrative but also to the broader aesthetics of communication. The chapter analyzes the narrative disseminated on the @Coalition Twitter channel and to explore the role of multimedia and emotions in this narrative. Understanding how the Coalition communicates its narratives requires an attention to aesthetics. In the Digital Age, narratives are increasingly communicated through visual, aesthetic multimedia forms such as photographs, inforgraphics, and videos.
