Situational Threat And Response Signals (STARS): Public-facing Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication Campaigns
Through a blend of conceptual and empirical work, the project develops the ‘Situational Threat and Response Signals’ (STARS) framework to help understand how different signals of risk and threat are transmitted and interpreted across particular contexts and settings. The purpose being to establish and elaborate a more sophisticated and flexible appreciation of how and why communication campaigns designed to deter terrorism and deliver influence over public behaviour, achieve differing outcomes.
Project resources
Academic Publications
Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication Campaigns and the Generative Nature of Trust
Abstract
This article examines how public-facing counterterrorism campaigns are strategically constructed and communicated, to try to signal trust, as part of their wider agenda to deter terrorist risks and threats. The empirical evidence includes frame analysis of the main messaging assets across three UK campaigns, in-depth practitioner interviews, and public focus groups across different parts of the UK. Building on sensemaking theory (Weick, 1995) we present insights into sensemaking, sensegiving and sensebreaking around trust in this form of messaging, and introduce the concept of ‘sensebridging’ as a theoretical extension useful in understanding how trust deficits are negotiated by publics and tackled by practitioners through particular public relations strategies and mediums. We demonstrate how specific trust elements are ‘designed in’ to campaign assets, and how these are (re-)interpreted by publics through the lens of distant and recent histories, as well as hyperlocal presents. Viewed in this way, the article moves beyond the idea of bifurcated trust that either is or is not present, instead arguing that trust is ‘generative,’ and as such more complex, situated, and mobile. In doing so, it makes several interdisciplinary contributions together with practical recommendations that centre on appreciating the generative nature of trust in strategic communication.
Rice, C., & Innes, M. (2025). Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication Campaigns and the Generative Nature of Trust. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 19(5), 624–650. https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2025.2501558
Frame, Fame and Fear Traps: The Dialectic of Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication
From the journal abstract:
This paper explores the challenges and complexities navigated and negotiated in public facing counter-terrorism strategic communication campaigns. Informed by frame analysis of campaign assets, practitioner interviews and public focus groups, the discussion pivots around three high-profile UK public messaging campaigns. Building from Goffman’s theory of “normal appearances” and the established concept of a “frame trap”, the analysis identifies two further shaping tensions. A “fear trap” occurs when counter-terrorism messages seek to “outbid” other risks in order to capture public attention, thereby unintentionally creating the negative emotional reactions sought through acts of terrorism, or overly-reassuring messages that induce public disengagement. In contrast, a “fame trap” results from creating “too much” public awareness of terrorism, by using commercial marketing logics. In practice, frame, fame and fear traps overlap and interact across different contexts, and the analysis uses the concept of a dialectic of anomaly and normality to highlight implications for future scholarship and practice.
Rice, C., Innes, M., & Ratcliffe, J. (2024). “Frame, Fame and Fear Traps: The Dialectic of Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communication.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2024.2360669