ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of a new investigation entitled Legitimising the Discourses of Radicalisation: Political Violence in the New Media Ecology.2 From late 2007, researchers at universities in the UK and elsewhere will identify and analyse the circulation of Jihadist discourses through Web 2.0 and mainstream media, and the role of these discourses in legitimating Jihadist actors, acts and ideologies. The context for this research is a new ‘media ecology’ (Cottle 2006) in which the availability and interactivity of a range of news sources contributes to a proliferation of (online) public-private spheres or ‘sphericules’ (Gitlin 1989) with loose and problematic engagements with mainstream public institutions and debates. The emergent and amorphous character of these communication networks demands innovative, dynamic research methods and conceptual frameworks, particularly in an investigation of their shaping of a new language of radicalisation. This includes the mediated contestation of the divergent meanings of this term and thus divergent responses to the nature of the ‘threat’ it describes. Through a ‘nexus analysis’ of radicalising discourses and language and a dynamic iteration of Web 2.0 spaces, mainstream media and news audiences, the project will generate a model of ‘cascading network activation’ to map and explain the relationship between critical security events, radicalising discourses and the legitimation of political violence. This chapter sets out the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the project.
