Pre-mediating guilt: radicalisation and mediality in British news

Hoskins, A. and O'Loughlin, B. (2009) Pre-mediating guilt: radicalisation and mediality in British news. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2(1), pp. 81-93. (doi: 10.1080/17539150902752820)

Abstract

This article offers an account to terrorism and security studies of radicalisation as a discursive phenomenon delivered and constructed by news media. In our mediatised lives the ubiquitous recording of our activities and opinions means we may be inadvertently pre-mediating a later category of criminality which can be imposed retrospectively on what we thought was an innocent life. A study of two instances of 'radicalisation' reported on British television news appears to demonstrate this. Family photographs, mobile cameraphone footage and other recordings may be used retrospectively to construct a single definition of a person as radicalised. Equally, such media materials can be used to achieve a coherent meaning of radicalisation. We identify three dimensions of British news media's relationship to radicalisation: (1) an unreflexive and possibly incoherent clustering of terms, phrases and discourses by journalists, policy-makers and security services to form a rhetorical structure of radicalisation; (2) the uncertainty around radicalisation may itself contribute to the term's connotations of risk and danger; and (3) media reporting of radicalisation constructs and presents a continuum of normality/safety and deviant/dangerous because of the medial continuity of 'our' media practices with those of 'radicals

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Hoskins, Professor Andrew
• Authors: Hoskins, A., and O'Loughlin, B.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Critical Studies on Terrorism
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• ISSN: 1753-9153
• ISSN (Online): 1753-9161
• Published Online: 01 January 2009