Clubb, G. orcid.org/0000-0002-5168-2043, Davies, G. and Kobayashi, Y. (2024) Transparent Communication in Counter-Terrorism Policy: Does Transparency Increase Public Support and Trust in Terrorism Prevention Programmes? Terrorism and Political Violence. ISSN 0954-6553
Abstract
Within research and policy on preventing and countering terrorism, transparency is viewed as a necessity to generate public support and trust for counter-terrorism policies. Yet there is no systematic evidence to support these assumptions while research in other policy areas has challenged these assumptions, showing some forms of transparency might decrease support and trust. This paper presents results from two experimental surveys conducted in the United Kingdom to examine the effect of increased transparency on support and trust for terrorism prevention policy. Our findings challenge the widely held assumptions with regard counter-terrorism policy: increased policy information about a prevention policy (based on real Prevent websites) decreases support for Prevent, it makes people less likely to report suspected radicalisation to Prevent, and it has no effect on trust. Conversely, transparency which communicates the rationale behind policy decisions (in this case, the controversial Prevent referral process) increases policy acceptance, decreases the intent to protest, and increases trust in the prevention programme. The findings have global implications for counter-terrorism policy which is primarily based on positive, linear assumption on the relationship between transparency, trust and support—the most common form of transparency these policies use is at best ineffective and at worse counter-productive.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | transparency, strategic communications, counter-terrorism, countering violent extremism, Prevent |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Feb 2024 15:51 |
Last Modified: | 09 Apr 2024 10:58 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09546553.2024.2322489 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209344 |