RAND Corporation. Social Science for Counterterrorism
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Social-Science Foundations for Strategic Communications 335
and Reid, 1990). A better understanding of current local media cover-
age of terrorism or insurgency, therefore, will help better estimate the
effectiveness of a potential campaign.
Questions to ask include
What media channels and communication methods are most fre-•
quently used by each audience segment?
When (that is, time of day) are these channels or formats most •
frequently used by each audience segment?
How do local media sources currently depict issues of terrorism •
and insurgency?
Message Testing and Feedback. Another common recommen-
dation in the literature is that a campaign be subjected to audience
testing before a full launch. At the most basic level, this is necessary
to make sure that the message matches the cognitive capabilities of the
audience. Otherwise, overly simple communications may be judged
by the audience as superficial and condescending (as happened with
U.S.-sponsored documentaries screened in Asia, Latin America, and
the Middle East during the Cold War) (Green, 1988); on the other
hand, overly complex communications may actually decrease audience
understanding of the issue at hand (Mitchell, 1973).
Message-testing can also reveal the mistaken cultural assump-
tions that lead to counterproductive communications outcomes. One
common assumption is that an audience is hostile merely because they
do not know enough about the messenger or its objectives; yet provid-
ing a hostile audience with more information may only arm them with
more reasons to continue their hostility. Another dangerous assump-
tion is that the audience shares the messenger’s lifestyle preferences; an
interesting example of this mistake comes from the Cold War, when an
anticommunist campaign in Iraq screened the film Ninotchka, which
unflatteringly compared the dour Soviet lifestyle with the excitement
of Paris. Despite the Western slant of the movie, Iraqi audiences pre-
ferred the “somber” life in the USSR to the “immoral” way of life
in France, shifting their attitudes in the opposite direction than was
intended (Battle, 2002).
336 Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together
Audience feedback does seem to be an effective tool for strength-
ening campaigns. One recent study in the education literature (Brown
and Gerhardt, 2002) distilled five key lessons confirmed by available
empirical data on feedback: (1) expert feedback should be collected
from individuals with different types of expertise, (2) audience feed-
back should be collected and used to revise messages, (3) audience
feedback should be collected in small groups with active discussion
of problems and suggestions, (4) all feedback should be summarized
in specific and directive ways, and (5) message designers should be
held accountable for incorporating feedback. Even though these les-
sons seem merely logical, they often are not followed. For example, a
16-state study of evaluations in the education field found that, contrary
to theory, many stakeholders, particularly those with larger adminis-
trative fiefdoms, had neither the time nor the desire to be involved in
the planning or implementation of evaluations (Smith, 1980).
Many surveys of successful programs also point to the impor-
tance of community involvement even after the campaign is launched.
Examples of such involvement include fine-tuning messages for a
better local fit (Knight et al., 1998); fostering audience reply and debate
through phone hotlines, followup groups, or putting people in touch
with those in similar circumstances (Weiss and Tschirhart, 1994); and
supplementing traditional media with targeted publications for key
stakeholders and efforts to persuade citizens to persuade each other
(O’Keefe and Reid, 1990).
Basic testing and feedback questions include
What types of pretesting strategies are available (for example, •
interviews, surveys, and day-after message recall)?
Which messages or arguments work best with each segment?•
Do the members of each audience segment adequately compre-•
hend the communications directed toward them?
How will future feedback and community involvement be incor-•
porated into the campaign?
Social-Science Foundations for Strategic Communications 337
Message Content and Delivery
e literature on how to best design an effective message is quite large,
spanning many disciplines and policy fields, and with many prescrip-
tive lessons based in empirical research. is section will extract high-
lights from this research, taking care to note (where applicable) how the
optimal content choice varies by context.
One-Sided Versus Two-Sided Messages. One major line of
theory and research has studied whether, and under what conditions,
the effectiveness of a message is bolstered by including opposing argu-
ments. In general, two-sided communications are most effective when
the audience is relatively knowledgeable about the issue or is currently
opposed to the position being advocated by the messenger (Fisher
and Misovich, 1990). Opposing arguments can increase perceptions
of messenger credibility but may begin to decrease persuasiveness if
their volume exceeds about 40 percent of the total message (Crowley
and Hoyer, 1994; Golden and Alpert, 1987). A useful meta-analysis
of existing research (Allen, 1991) concluded that a two-sided message
without refutation (of the opposing argument) is less persuasive than a
one-sided argument, which in turn is less persuasive than a two-sided
message with refutation.
A specific two-sided approach with potential use for the global
war on terrorism is behavioral inoculation (Lumsdaine and Janis, 1953;
McGuire, 1970), in which individuals at risk of accepting arguments
in favor of a negative behavior (such as joining a terrorist or insur-
gent organization) are proactively presented with those arguments in
an attempt to “inoculate” them. Effective inoculation should include
both threat messages (realistically explaining to the audience that they
will be pressured to commence the negative behavior) as well as refuta-
tional preemption (refuting the specific arguments they will hear from
the other side, starting with the most common) (Pfau, 1995). Effec-
tive inoculation should also be tailored to the way the audience thinks
about the issue and where there is no clear winner between using peer
or more authoritative inoculators (Best et al., 1988). Inoculation has
been shown to be effective in such diverse contexts as inoculating ado-
lescents against prosmoking arguments (Banerjee and Greene, 2006)
and inoculating supporters of political candidates against the attack ads
338 Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together
of opposing candidates (Pfau and Burgoon, 1988). Although a recent
attempt at inoculating individuals against a propagandistic YouTube
video failed to show an effect, this was likely because of limitations in
the design of the study (Lim and Ki, 2007).
A final topic to note here is whether or not a one-sided argument
should be softened by using such qualifiers as “perhaps” or “maybe.”
is technique has been criticized as detrimental to the attention-
getting power of the message (Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968), but
others (Browne, 1983) have attributed the high credibility of the BBC
to contributors who use this type of qualified language.
Gain Framing Versus Loss Framing. In making choices, individ-
uals take greater risks when faced with a dilemma framed in terms
of losses (such as discussing “lives lost”) than in dilemmas framed
in terms of gains (such as discussing “lives saved”), even if the two
dilemmas are otherwise identical (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). is
effect has been evaluated in the context of message design. Research
has found that loss-framed messages are deemed more persuasive by
highly authoritative individuals (that is, those aggressive toward out-
siders and submissive toward authority), whereas gain-framed messages
are deemed better by those scoring low on authoritarianism (Lavine
et al., 1999). As might also be expected, loss frames are more effective
when persuading individuals to perform behaviors perceived as risky,
whereas gain frames are more effective for encouraging behaviors per-
ceived as safe (Rothman and Salovey, 1997). In terrorism and insur-
gency, of course, many actions—such as the decision to provide infor-
mation on suspicious activity to security forces—may be perceived as
anything from very risky to moderately safe, depending on an indi-
vidual’s personality and the local security environment.
An extension of loss framing that may be useful for CT/COIN
communications is perceptual deterrence (Gibbs, 1975; Zimring and
Hawkins, 1973), in which potential offenders are informed of the
risk of arrest or punishment to deter behavior. For deterring crimi-
nal behavior, the probability of arrest is more influential than the con-
sequences of arrest (Barthe, 2006; Burkett and Ward, 1993); indeed,
increased publicity surrounding executions may actually lead to more
homicides (Bowers and Pierce, 1975). e danger of merely sensation-
Social-Science Foundations for Strategic Communications 339
alizing wrongdoing by focusing on violent punishment would seem
doubly true in the martyrdom-seeking cultures of certain terrorist or
insurgent organizations.
Nevertheless, one highly effective use of perceptual deterrence
against gang violence (Braga et al., 2001) explicitly spelled out the law
enforcement consequences of violent acts to violent gang members;
the program was not trying to destroy the gang but simply trying to
encourage it to end violence. Another perceptual deterrence strategy
involving gun crime was not able to increase knowledge of the deter-
rent penalties, possibly because of a failure to properly segment the
audience (Haas and Turley, 2007).
Positive Emotions Versus Negative Emotions. A cousin of the
gain-framed versus loss-framed debate is whether messages are more
effective when they appeal to positive emotions (such as pride or hope)
or to negative emotions (such as fear or anger). On the one hand,
positive antiviolence messages with realistic characters and situations
score highest on attention and interest as well as on understandabil-
ity, credibility, and effectiveness (Borzekowski and Poussaint, 1999;
2000). Appeals to positive emotions are effective for audiences unfa-
miliar with the message and help them make faster decisions and be
more compliant (Isen, 1987). In a message, the use of positive emotions
increases the effectiveness of logically weak arguments but decreases
the effectiveness of logically strong arguments (Batra and Stayman,
1990). However, a positive tone is generally ineffective if the audience
is already predisposed to disagree with the message (Monahan, 1995).
is limitation may be critical in CT/COIN contexts, where predis-
positions against the communications arm of security forces may be
relatively high.
Negative emotions (particularly fear) do seem to affect personal
risk-avoidance behaviors but have an ambiguous record on both per-
sonal preventive behaviors and collective crime prevention (Rosenbaum
and Heath, 1990). ere is also the danger that too many appeals to
fear can actually lead to accelerated neighborhood decline (Skogan,
1986). is risk would seem to be especially acute in precisely those
areas most affected by terrorism or insurgency. Fear-inducing messages
are less effective when the audience is forced to watch them instead of
340 Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together
choosing to watch (Horowitz, 1969), when the audience already has
high baseline levels of anxiety, or when targeting younger audiences
(Boster and Mongeau, 1984). e fearful message should be supple-
mented by communicating personal efficacy (you can do something to
avoid the fearful outcome) and response efficacy (it will actually work)
(Hale and Dillard, 1995). As for persuasive messages using negative
emotions besides fear—particularly sadness and anger—recent empiri-
cal work (DeSteno et al., 2004; Rucker and Petty, 2004) emphasizes
the importance of matching the tone of the message with the audi-
ence’s current mood.
Truth Versus Untruth. In strategic communications, appear-
ances of inauthenticity can severely harm a campaign; for instance,
an expensive, three-year project to film U.S. progress in Vietnam was
shelved after it was discovered that some battle scenes had been staged
(Dizard, 2004). Another major risk of exaggeration or manipulation
in strategic communications is the risk to overall source credibility.
e link between source credibility and message persuasiveness is quite
strong, although the effect may dissipate over time as people remem-
ber the message but forget who said it (known as the “sleeper effect”)
(Hovland and Weiss, 1951; Kumkale and Albarracin, 2004). However,
source credibility on its own cannot save a weak or misleading argu-
ment; if even a highly credible speaker is relying on irrelevant evidence
or evidence from a poor-quality source, audience attitudes shift away
from the position the speaker is advocating (Luchok and McCroskey,
1978). Audiences have demonstrated resistance to persuasion based on
spurious evidence, particularly when the claims are tangible or when
alternative sources of information on the subject are available (Reinard,
1988).
Attention-Grabbing Versus Understandable Messages. A mes-
sage can effectively grab audience attention by triggering the audience’s
active thought processes. is can be done by simply instructing the
audience to pay attention; or by using novel, unexpected, or discrepant
messages and media (Louis and Sutton, 1991; Parrott, 1995). However,
this novelty can reduce audience comprehension of the message if taken
too far. Music-themed antiviolence messages can be attention-getting
but are less likely to be understood; special effects–based or abstract
Social-Science Foundations for Strategic Communications 341
messages may also generate interest but falter on understandability and
credibility. Simple visuals (particularly graphic visuals) may represent
an effective combination of vividness and persuasiveness (Borzekowski
and Poussaint, 1999, 2000).
Peer Versus Nonpeer Spokespersons. A final issue spanning both
mid-term and long-term objectives is whether, and how, to deliver mes-
sages to an audience through their peers. Given the cultural divide
between the U.S. and foreign strategic publics, this issue is of particular
importance for CT/COIN efforts. ere is a diverse theoretical basis
justifying the use of peers in persuasion. For instance, when encour-
aging positive behaviors among an audience, stages of change theo-
ries (DiClemente and Prochaska, 1985) suggest that the most effective
role models are just one stage beyond that of the target audience and
therefore in a position to explain how they were able to take the next
incremental step toward the desired behavior (for example, transition-
ing from merely thinking about leaving a terrorist support network to
actually doing so) (Maibach and Cotton, 1995).
e general benefit of using peer spokespersons has been con-
firmed in many empirical studies. As discussed above, crisis spokes-
persons are more effective when they resemble their audience (Arpan,
2002). Early persuasion research (Brock, 1965) also found that mes-
sengers who are similar to members of the target audience are more
persuasive than dissimilar messengers, even if the latter are perceived as
more knowledgeable. For antiviolence messages, spokespersons similar
to the audience also score higher on attention, interest, and credibil-
ity than even well-known authority figures (Borzekowski and Pous-
saint, 1999, 2000). e limited research on antigang advertising has
also found that antigang messages delivered by actual and former gang
members were judged the most influential by both current gang mem-
bers and individuals at high risk of joining gangs (Chapel, Peterson,
and Joseph, 1999; Lafontaine, Ferguson, and Wormith, 2005).
However, peer spokespersons may not always be preferable. Addi-
tional research on this topic has found that messages delivered by simi-
lar sources may be best at reinforcing normative or value judgments
(for example, that terrorism is wrong), whereas messages delivered by
dissimilar sources are best at reinforcing factual beliefs (Goethals and
342 Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together
Nelson, 1973). erefore, one potential role of nonpeer spokespersons
may be to confirm widely held factual beliefs that have recently come
under attack (for instance, in debunking strange conspiracy theories).
Longer-term strategies for actually changing social norms about
violence—rather than simply choosing the identity of a spokesperson—
will be examined below.
Summative Evaluation
Although different researchers employ different terminology and
taxonomies, here we equate summative evaluation with “back-end”
evaluation (Coffman, 2002), encompassing (1) process evaluation,
which measures effort, direct accomplishments, and implementation;
(2) outcome evaluation, which measures program effects and direct
changes against baseline levels; and (3) impact evaluation, which mea-
sures aggregate or long-term results, requiring experimental or quasi-
experimental research to determine causality. Summative evaluation
frameworks are useful for highlighting tensions (such as the trade-off
between using evaluation funds for showing results rather than pro-
gram improvement [Patton, 1997]) and for identifying key research
questions. Below is a selection of key questions drawn from several
studies (Barthe, 2006; Coffman, 2002; Weiss and Tschirhart, 1994);
they have been reworded to fit within counterterrorism or counterin-
surgency contexts, when necessary.
Process Evaluation
How much communications output was created and distributed?•
Was the audience targeted successfully?•
How much media placement did the campaign receive?•
How many people were reached and for how long?•
Did the audience comprehend and recall the message?•
Outcome Evaluation
How have key audience factors (that is, knowledge, awareness, •
saliency, attitudes, anxiety, norms, self-efficacy, behavioral inten-
tions, or behaviors) changed from precampaign levels?
Social-Science Foundations for Strategic Communications 343
How has the media’s framing of the problem changed from before •
the campaign?
What is the level of community satisfaction with the communica-•
tions campaign?
Impact Evaluation
What are the long-term behavioral changes in the target com-•
munity or among potential or current terrorists and their
supporters?
What is the long-term effect of the program on the incidence, •
severity, lethality, cost, or geographic distribution of terrorist and
insurgent attacks within the area covered by the communications
campaign?
Have there been any systems-level responses to the campaign, •
such as the development of new organizations?
Have there been any significant policy or political responses to •
the campaign?
ere is an enormous body of empirical evidence on how best
to run a summative evaluation, covering topics from survey design to
advanced statistical methods. A detailed discussion of measuring out-
comes appears in a companion paper on metrics (Bahney, 2009), but it
is worth noting that these methodological lessons occasionally intersect
with some of the approaches discussed above. For instance, when eval-
uating a perceptual deterrence campaign (that is, deterring terrorists or
insurgents by conveying the threat of punishment), effects should be
measured separately for those who believe terrorism is morally wrong
and those who find it morally neutral or acceptable. Otherwise, the
effectiveness of the campaign will be underestimated because those
who find terrorism morally wrong show no deterrence effect; they have
already decided not to engage in it (Burkett and Ward, 1993).
ere are also important theory-based lessons. For example,
theory on behavior change highlights the need to measure audience
attitudes toward the relevant behavior at the heart of a campaign rather
than the relevant outcome (for example, measuring specific attitudes
344 Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together
toward reporting suspicious activity rather than attitudes toward ter-
rorism or insurgency in general) (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980).
Long-Term Srategies
Long-term strategic communications has been defined to include two
methods: building partnerships with civil society and engaging in a
dialogue of ideas (DSB, 2008). e discussion below slightly broadens
this first goal (to include all strategic relationship-building) and nar-
rows the second (to focus on the long-term de-legitimization of terrorist
groups, tactics, and ideologies).
Strategic Relationship-Building
Strong strategic relationships can contribute to the long-term success
of CT/COIN strategic communications in a number of ways. Good
relationships with the public can help create and maintain credibility
and trust; good relationships with local leaders can help amplify one’s
message, maintain a community’s willingness to accept a communica-
tions intervention, and prevent disputes from escalating into crises; and
good relationships with the media can help curtail the public relations
fallout from such crises, should they occur.
e first contribution of social science in this effort has been in
defining what a good relationship is and how it can be measured. An
influential research program (Grunig, 2002; Hon and Grunig, 1999)
has isolated and ranked four key elements that reflect a successful rela-
tionship. e most important is control mutuality, or the degree to
which partners in a relationship accept the current balance of control;
this is followed by mutual trust, commitment to the relationship, and
relationship satisfaction. Reliable survey tools have been developed to
capture and measure these factors (Hon and Grunig, 1999). In the
military context, transparency (making all legally releasable informa-
tion available) has been added to this list, whereas the phrase “con-
trol mutuality” (and its potential replacement, “mutual influence”)
has been viewed somewhat critically in light of government mandates
against exerting undue influence over populations (Plowman, 2007).