Abstract
Media certainly play a role in trajectories toward violent extremism (VE) and in the perception of VE within the population. The influence of mass media and social media on the perceptions of VE, on the one hand, and on the process leading to VE, on the other hand, is certainly an emerging issue with a strong contextual component; however, it has given rise to very few empirical studies. This chapter presents some of the results pertaining to Islamist violent extremism, stemming from a project that studied several types of extremism. Based on interviews with young extremists in Morocco and Quebec that shed light on their trajectories, this chapter presents the ideological sources, the ambivalence between Quietist and violent Salafism, the concrete media experience by young extremists, and several other determining factors. The first section presents the context and methodology of the project, as well as some general results. The conclusion exposes one of the key findings of the research, namely the fact that VE is fueled by frameworks which have characteristics connecting them to conspiracy theories.
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Notes
- 1.
Solange Lefebvre, professor at the Institute for Religious Studies, conducted the research, with six co-investigators, about twenty collaborators and research assistants. Mohamed Fadil joined the team as an international collaborator based in Morocco. Dianne Casoni, a psychologist teaching in the Criminology Department at University of Montreal, who was the main co-investigator on the project, passed away in February 2020, a few days before the public presentation of the final report. We are deeply indebted to her. In addition to using evidence-based data to answer research questions, Concerted Action Programs, in Quebec, also have concrete objectives.
- 2.
Frédérick Bastien, professor at the Department of Political Science at University of Montreal, led the survey initiative.
- 3.
Allison Harell, professor at the Department of Political Science at University of Quebec in Montreal, led the experiment.
- 4.
Sylvain Rocheleau, professor in Communication Studies at University of Sherbrooke, conducted the corpus analysis.
- 5.
Solange Lefebvre led the qualitative projects with Dianne Casoni, in Quebec, while Mohamed Fadil did interviews with young extremists in Morocco.
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Acknowledgements
Solange Lefebvre would like to thank the Research Fund of Quebec—Society and Culture and the Quebec Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration for their financial support of this project. She would also like to acknowledge the support of her research through her Research Chair in the Management of Cultural and Religious Diversity. She is grateful to Liane Grant for her editorial assistance and linguistic revisions.
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Fadil, M., Lefebvre, S. (2021). The Role of Mass Media and Social Media in Islamist Violent Extremism. In: Bonino, S., Ricucci, R. (eds) Islam and Security in the West. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67925-5_11
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