Conceptualizing radicalization in a market for loyalties

Abstract

The purpose of this analysis is to locate radicalization – the process of developing extremist ideologies and beliefs – in the broader context of strategic actors (e.g. states) competing for legitimacy in transnational public spheres. Radicalization is distinct from both terrorism and violent extremism, though it is often a precursor to the use of terrorist tactics and can be critical for creating broad support for extremist movements and behaviors. The primary concern here is not terrorism per se, but rather how strategic actors compete to radicalize communities against the established organs and apparatuses of a given society. Borrowing from Price’s (1994) model of the market for loyalties, the author proposes that radicalization is best understood as within the context of the nation-state system, shaped by the existence of unsanctioned, typically foreign information flows. Governments are increasingly intervening into this space, both to shore up loyalty among their domestic citizenry and to engage foreign citizens in ways that weaken their allegiances to their own governments. Emerging media technologies provide new structures for ideological transfer, enabling states and non-state actors to compete for influence in a more balanced, transnational, ideational playing field. The stakes are significant, of course, with citizens clamoring for more transparent, fair and efficacious governance and increasingly threatening the legitimacy of states around the world.

Keywords

citizenship marketplace of ideas nation-state propaganda radicalization social media theory

Building on Price’s (1994) market for loyalties model, I propose that radicalization is a process whereby citizen loyalty shifts away from the established governing authorities in a given society and is best understood in the context of the nation-state system while depending on the existence of unsanctioned, typically foreign information flows. Emerging media technologies provide new structures for ideological transfer, enabling states and non-state actors to compete for influence in a more balanced, transnational, ideational playing field. The stakes are significant, with citizens clamoring for more transparent, fair, and efficacious governance and increasingly threatening the legitimacy of states around the world (Castells, 2011).

The problem of radicalization

The problem of radicalization is, to a certain extent, a definitional one. The original meaning of radical was to get to the root of a social problem. Today, radicalization is defined as ‘the process of developing extremist ideologies and beliefs’ (Borum, 2011: 9). It is distinct from violent extremism and terrorism in that both refer to specific actions, whereas radicalization is a process occurring at the ideational and ideological levels. Terrorism differs from both violent extremism and radicalization in its tactics: unlawful, politically motivated violence that is carried out for the purpose of causing harm (typically via fear) to a broader section of society than is physically targeted or affected by the primary attack. Violent extremism refers to ideologically motivated violence in pursuit of political goals. The critical difference between violent extremism and terrorism is that the former is not for the purpose of broader social harm; rather, it targets specific actors responsible for perceived social ills. These lines are often blurred, but a line remains nonetheless. For example, while all terrorism is an example of extremist violence, not all violent extremists deploy terrorist tactics. Figure 1 provides additional further clarification and examples of the differences between terrorism, extremism and radicalization.

Figure 1.

Terrorism, violent extremism and radicalization.

According to the British House of Commons (2012) ‘Roots of Radicalization’ report, individuals who distrust government and police, see a conflict between their ethnic and national identity, or have experienced discrimination or harassment are especially vulnerable to radicalization. While acknowledging that little ‘is known about why certain individuals resort to violence, when other individuals from the same community, with similar experiences, do not become involved in violent activity’ (Home Office Occasional Paper 98, 2011), the British government did find that grievance was typically central to the radicalization process. It also found that ‘the internet does seem to feature in most, if not all, of the routes of radicalization’ (British House of Commons, 2012: 16).

Operationalizing radicalization in cross-cultural or comparative contexts has also proven to be extraordinarily difficult. ‘Extremist ideologies or beliefs’ are typically defined in comparison to those held by others within a particular community, or groups of individuals who share common societal-level values, political and economic systems, and geographic space. Such an approach allows for a coherent baseline against which extremism can be identified. As a result, radicalization literature is primarily concerned with the processes by which ideologies and beliefs in extreme opposition to one’s home country are established and mobilized (Horgan, 2006). This process is often referred to as ‘homegrown radicalization’.

Information communication technologies (ICTs) play a crucial role in the process of radicalization. For example, the White House’s (2011: 6) counter-radicalization strategy acknowledges ‘the important role the Internet and social networking sites play in advancing violent extremist narratives’. The open-nature of web-based platforms are particularly useful for those aiming to mobilize others disillusioned with the status quo that are similarly seeking out alternative fora where their perspectives may resonate with others. Its global reach and accessibility also allow for the building of broader constituencies, faster, as well as the coordination of actual operations across borders (Brachman, 2009; Conway, 2012; Weimann, 2006). Research shows that immersion into extremist forums can create ‘mortality salience’, or a sense of one’s own mortality, increasing support for terrorist tactics, as well as a sense of moral outrage, which can trigger violent behavior (Pyszczynski et al., 2006; Sageman, 2008). Most recently, RAND’s careful analysis of 15 cases of violent radicalization verified the centrality of the internet in each of the cases examined (Von Behr et al., 2013).

For example, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who killed 69 people in Oslo in 2011, described his radicalization as an iterative process enabled by increasing involvement with a right-wing blog, ‘Gates of Vienna’. Wade Michael Page, a neo-Nazi activist suspected of perpetrating the Gurdwara attack in Wisconsin in 2012, was closely affiliated with the online portal of the Hammerskin Nation, a skinhead movement operating across the United States. While typically categorized as ‘lone-wolf’ or ‘school-shooter’ incidents, evidence suggests these violent extremists believed that they were representing a broader constituency. These constituencies are increasingly virtual, built and maintained online (Bartlett et al., 2011). According to Neumann (2013: 432):

There seems to be a strong consensus among different government departments and agencies as well as independent analysts and experts that the growing importance of the Internet in radicalization is the single most significant innovation to have affected homegrown radicalization since the 11 September attacks in 2001.

What can theories of strategic communication offer in terms of guiding policymakers as they turn their focus to combatting radicalization online? Conceptualizing the process of radicalization via digital information communication technologies (ICTs) requires an understanding of how nation-states sustain shared identities and compete with other foreign actors to strengthen their own, while weakening others’ standing among global citizens. Radicalization of a domestic group is concerning not simply because it represents a threat to the country’s security, but also because it indicates that citizens disregard a shared value and belief system from their home country for another. The ability to control domestic information flows has provided the nation-state with its strength and stability since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 (Anderson, 1983; Deutsch, 1966). However, the declining costs to develop, send, and receive information across borders challenge states’ capacities to control their domestic markets for ideas. For now, this weakening of information sovereignty permits greater competition over ideas between the citizenry and the state (Price, 2002). This current transition is best understood in the context of how emergent information technologies have historically created dynamic shifts in the constitution and legitimation of political power.

Technology, power and the state

The production and dissemination of information is at the core of the modern Westphalian nation-state (Braman, 2007). Information communication technologies (ICTs) are an increasingly central element of 21st-century statecraft, with adaptive political actors creating and controlling information flows in order to further their interests. At the same time, innovations in ICTs are typically couched in a discourse of furthering a universal right to free expression, often connected to a Kantian (1983[1795]) idea of achieving a perpetual peace. For example, wireless telegraphy mastermind Guglielmo Marconi (1923) declared: ‘communication between peoples widely separated in space and thought is undoubtedly the greatest weapon against the evils of misunderstanding and jealousy.’ The more connected the world is, the more difficult it is to engage in conflict, or so the thinking goes. Nearly a century later, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (2010) echoed this sentiment, proposing a global right to connect to the web: ‘Information freedom supports the peace and security that provides a foundation for global progress. Historically, asymmetrical access to information is one of the leading causes of interstate conflict.’ A narrative of information as peace inducing is firmly embedded within discourses of communication and technology. This narrative is, of course, strategic.

Appealing as the promise of information-driven peace may be, history offers ample evidence for skeptics. Not long after Marconi’s radio was adopted by the Western world, German leaders deployed it as a tool of war, aiding Nazi aggression and Hitler’s genocide of six million European Jews (Doherty, 2000). Just six months after Clinton spoke of the need for recognition of a universal right to connect to the world wide web, news broke that the US government, in coordination with Israel, deployed a cyber worm to slow Iran’s nuclear program (Sanger, 2012). Despite theorization of an inevitable global village bound by transnational media flows and ubiquitous connectivity (Castells, 1996; Guehenno, 2000; Hardt and Negri, 2001; McLuhan and Powers, 1992; Ohmae, 1996), states remain strategic actors, eager to adopt emerging technologies and adapt policy to advance national interests.

Revolutions in communication technologies have had two, sometimes diametric, roles over the millennia. Francis Bacon was first attributed as saying ‘Scientia potentia est’ (‘Knowledge is power’). Indeed, enabling technologies capable of capturing and sharing information changes the constitution and sharing of knowledge (i.e. the collective belief in a set of truths) and thus, the constitution of power relations (Foucault, 1980). Analyzing the rise and fall of ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman Empires, Canadian historian Harold Innis (1950, 1951) found that every major communication technology contained intrinsic biases toward a particular organization and control of information, and thus shaped the constitution of authority. For example, Latin script written on parchment, the medium of the Christian Church in the high and late Middle Ages, created a monopoly of knowledge among the priests who were able to control access to the divine knowledge of the heavens. For the church, its ability to have exclusive access to what society accepted as ‘divine knowledge’ provided it the authority to prescribe social policy, holding sway over royalty and citizens alike.

Benedict Anderson (1983) identified the adoption of the printing press in Europe as critical for the emergence of the modern nation-state. Arguing that no person could ever know every other member of his or her nation, Anderson’s central research question was how nations – or, ‘imagined communities’ – came to be. His analysis found that, as the printing press became more widespread in the 15th and 16th centuries, entrepreneurs began printing books and more transitory media in local vernaculars, rather than using the exclusive script languages, such as Latin, in order to maximize circulation and accessibility. This enabled rapid growth of local dialects and facilitated the emergence and codification of independent communities formed around a shared, common language. Documented, standardized, disseminated and taught for generations, these shared discourses helped shape community values and norms. According to Anderson:

The very possibility of imagining the nation only arose historically [with the emergence of] print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways. The first European nation-states were thus formed around their national print-languages. (p. 36)

The physical traits of a technology do not alone dictate particular communicative biases. Rather, the protocols and norms that govern how individuals share ideas and utilize technology dictate precisely how the technology will impact knowledge generation and legitimize (or de-legitimize) authority. For example, different alphabets – shared protocols for the exchange of ideas via text – necessarily have biases that permit or inhibit opportunities. Innis (1950: 39) found that ‘a flexible alphabet favoured the growth of trade, development of the trading cities of the Phoenicians, and the emergence of smaller nations dependent on distinct languages.’ The printing press itself did not cause a transition from tribes and empires to Westphalian sovereignty. Rather, the use of the printing press to produce locally authored books in indigenous languages fostered a shift in consciousness as to what constituted legitimate authority in Europe. Similarly, the internet and the Global Positioning System (GPS), both products of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), facilitated and even encouraged the modern proliferation of social media, and the challenges they present for existing institutions. Emergent communication technologies facilitate change not simply through their existence, but through the specific socio-cultural and legal contexts that dictate how emerging media impress upon a society.

Just as the printing press reshaped the constitution of authority in the 16th century, undersea cables and wireless telegraphy reshaped geopolitical power relations in the 20th century. Scholars have documented the role that propaganda – ‘a one-way communication system designed to influence belief’ – played in the conduct of 20th-century foreign affairs, especially in times of conflict (Wood, 1992: 25). During World War I, allied forces severed German access to the world by cutting their cables. European news agencies friendly to their home government filtered and rewrote news sent abroad. In World War II, state-financed and operated international broadcasting was a critical tool of statecraft. Learning from their experiences of being isolated in World War I, the Nazis invested heavily in radio. It was so important to the Nazis’ war efforts at home and abroad that they often targeted foreign radio transmitters first when invading a country. In turn, their own transmitters emerged as targets. According to Oigen Hadamowski, Director of Nazi Radio operations: ‘We spell radio with three exclamation marks because of its miraculous power – the strongest weapon ever given to the human spirit – that opens hearts and does not stop at borders’ (cited in Hale, 1975: 1). Governments involved in World War II utilized propaganda to influence foreign opinions, with British broadcasting (e.g. the BBC World Service) holding particularly significant sway over European and American public opinions (Taylor, 2003). Arguably, British propaganda efforts were critical for propelling the US to enter into both world wars (Cull, 1996).

Modern advances in communication technologies are similarly reshaping power relations, but not necessarily in ways many predicted. New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman (2000: 66) envisioned that ‘the days when governments could isolate their people from understanding what life was like beyond their borders or even beyond their village are over.’ Such optimistic, cyber-utopian predictions have been rampant, including among US State Department diplomats (Lichtenstein, 2010). Philip Taylor (1997: 24) captured this sentiment when he wrote:

Together with the internal combustion engine, penicillin and the splitting of the atom, [mass media] have served to transform the very nature not only of how human beings live their lives but of how they perceive the world around them.

Yet, beneath Taylor’s platitude is an argument with resonance: controlling information flows has become increasingly difficult yet crucial for state actors, and efforts at managing information flows are symbolic of the broader challenges that the modern era of globalization presents to state sovereignty, the defining building block of the modern international system. To explore how established and emerging international actors compete for ideational influence in the modern media ecology, I turn to a model of strategic international communication: Monroe Price’s (1994) market for loyalties.

Radicalization in the market for loyalties

The market for loyalties model synthesizes propaganda, dialogue, and networked theories of strategic communication by suggesting that each approach is fundamentally driven by similar motivations and success or failure determined by the particularities of the ideational marketplace in question (Ellul, 1973; Riordan, 2004). This market framework is grounded on a basic premise: international actors enact policies analogous to a strategic investment aiming to shape the allegiances of foreign audiences in ways that increase the likelihood of an outcome favored by the actor. In this marketplace, international actors (usually governments, but increasingly non-state actors) are the sellers, and audiences are the buyers. Here, markets do not connect to modern capitalist or economic systems. This is not the same as the ‘free-market’ ideology that is increasingly pervasive in political discourse. One need not agree with laissez-faire economic philosophy to appreciate a market as a system for determining mutually acceptable prices, or the terms of exchange between different actors. Market systems can assess, explain, and even predict human behavior in complex environments (Diamond and Vartiainen, 2012; Harford, 2005; Munro, 2009; Thaler and Sunstein, 2009; Tommasi and Ierull, 1995). Thus, the market for loyalties is a means of conceptualizing how communication technologies, policies, and perceptions interact and shape the context within which radicalization, and its alternatives, occur.

At a rudimentary level, strategic actors are selling information in exchange for the audiences’ attention, an increasingly scarce resource given the saturation of media markets around the world (see Figure 2). Yet actors are not simply selling information; rather, they are offering stories and identities that in some capacity reflect an ideological perspective. Audiences agree to ‘buy’ what an actor is selling by repeatedly consuming and engaging with the ideational product and, in return, become increasingly loyal to the underlying narrative and its associated community.

Figure 2.

Commerce vs ideas: Comparing commerce and idea-based markets.

Similar to any marketplace, the more individuals buy (in this case, consume), the more they have to give (i.e. identify themselves with), and the more loyal they become to the investment’s successful outcome and/or popularity. Thus, the more an audience tunes into an actor’s media, the more they will identify with its messages and content. Examples include support for partisan news media programming to (e.g. the editorial programming of Al Jazeera or Fox News) or more subtle cultural or social messages embedded into the plots of cultural programs (e.g. the BBC World Service’s educational entertainment soap operas). This is not to say that media content inevitably ‘brainwashes’ viewing audiences. Rather, given the diversity and plethora of media options available today, audiences repeatedly tune into a particular network or YouTube channel because its programming resonates with or fulfills an ideational need. This need not be a rational choice on behalf of media consumers, but rather a reflection of basic informational needs driving audience behavior (Ball-Rokeach, 1985). Thus, more than ever, content is king. The medium is merely a component of the message.

Just as in commercial markets, the introduction of new competitors into an ideational market can alter the dynamics between individuals and organizations. In Brazil, for example, the adoption of television in rural communities led to a more progressive climate for women’s rights. Between 1970 and 1990, daily access to television in Brazil jumped from 10 to 80 percent. Popular novelas (soap operas) featuring strong, independent, educated, unmarried, and ambitious women provided compelling role models in rural areas where a woman’s role was largely limited to childbearing and housework (La Ferrara et al., 2008). Access to television programming generally, and to novelas in particular, statistically correlated to substantial decreases in the birth rate, a key indicator of development and women’s equality. Similar results occurred in India’s rural communities when introduced to television and local soap operas (Jensen and Oster, 2009).

In terms of the ideational marketplace, as a new communication technology (commercial satellites) decreased the cost of entering the market, a new seller (Globo, the producer of Brazil’s novelas) provided a good (television programs) in high demand among buyers (Brazil’s citizenry). The buyers compensated the seller through their loyalty to the programs, including discussing the programs with family and friends and consistently tuning in. Large, dedicated, and mobilized audiences are valuable to advertisers and, in return, generate substantial revenue for the seller.

In the cases of Brazil and India, the introduction of media technologies and content contributed to a shifting of loyalties away from traditional family and societal structures toward those popularized on television. A new competitor altered the marketplace of loyalties through enhanced competition, eventually resulting in changes in consumer behaviors. Policymakers should take note that the introduction of a new competitor itself is not necessarily transformational; rather the new competitor’s ability to identify and react to unmet demand shifted loyalties and eventually consumers’ leisure habits.

The entrance of new competitors, especially in imperfect or distorted markets, can also be highly disruptive. In Sinjar, a tradition-bound community in northwest Iraq, exposure to media reflecting Western values contributed to increased suicides among teenage women. Between 2011 and June 2012, 50 teenage girls killed themselves, either through self-immolation or gunshot. This is not only a staggering number of suicides for Iraqis; it is among the top five worst per capita female teenage suicide rates in the world. Interviews with girls who survived the suicide attempts indicate that access to the internet and satellite TV have been crucial in exposing girls to ‘glimpses of a better life, unencumbered by the traditions that have constricted women for centuries’ (Arango, 2012: A12). Locals blame the widely popular Turkish soap opera, Forbidden Love, for raising expectations among teenage Iraqis of a life defined not by obedience and child rearing, but rather by individualism and romance. According to Iraqi journalist Kheri Shingli: ‘The girls feel they are not living their life well compared to the rest of the world’ (cited in Arango, 2012: A12). Just as the introduction of new technology-driven platforms often radically disrupt existing business models in a static market (e.g. Craigslist’s impact on the newspaper industry, and Wikipedia’s impact on Encyclopedia Britannica), dramatic change in a closed ideational marketplace can have unexpected, and even detrimental consequences.

I propose using the market for loyalties to conceptualize how communication technologies and policy interact and shape the context within which radicalization occurs. Here, radicalization is one extreme, whereby a citizen defects (either ideologically, physically, or both) from his or her home country, pledging allegiance to another political actor whose interests are necessarily at odds with the home country’s interests.

Sellers

Why do international actors invest in the market for loyalties? One clear winner from the current processes of globalization has been the citizen. Governments around the world are increasingly facing activated, mobilized and intelligent citizen groups calling for government reform and accountability. The Arab Spring demonstrated how powerful these movements are in bringing about dramatic change – even regime change – in just a matter of weeks (Edwards, 2012).

The US government invests in the marketplace of loyalties through its public diplomacy programs to improve the likely acceptance of its foreign policies and national interests (e.g. democracy in the Middle East) and/or increase interest in its private sector goods and services (e.g. increased acceptance of Coca-Cola products and Facebook’s web services). Similar to the plethora of rationales one relies upon when investing in a stock market (e.g. financial profit, ideological support for the corporation’s mission, the possibility of undercutting a competitor by investing in its partners, etc.), the precise reasons for any actor’s intervention into another’s information space vary significantly and over time.

As foreign actors appeal to a country’s domestic audiences through communication technologies, governments are eager to restrict access to content that could negatively impact a citizens’ loyalty to their regime. They may also provide more appealing information (propaganda), favorable economic policy, and robust social services to court domestic constituencies. In January 2011, for example, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered a shutdown of all internet services in an effort to regain control over the flow of information during protests that would eventually force his removal from power. Mubarak implemented this draconian measure only after weeks of revved-up government propaganda disseminated via terrestrial television and radio services. China, too, is keen to protect its information space from foreign interventions, deploying a mix of censorship, propaganda, and market solutions to increase the amount of web content that strengthens shared Chinese nationalism and shared values (Powers and Jablonski, 2015).

As economic interests increasingly become interconnected with a state’s national interests, governments are moving to regulate international information flows in ways that preserve their national economic advantage. In the United States, for example, growing political interest exists in expanding the monitoring and regulation of internet traffic not for the purpose of political censorship, but rather to enhance the security of web services and protect intellectual property that drive the nation’s economic growth (US Department of Commerce, 2012). While the motivations and tactics that Egypt, China and the US use are quite diverse, analytically speaking, they are similar in the sense that they represent government efforts to shape the marketplace of information flows for the purpose of national survival.

There are other state interests at stake too. For example, the number of American citizens renouncing their citizenship continues to grow each year, up to 1,780 in 2011. The high-profile case of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who opted to become a citizen of Singapore, highlights the growing number of Americans who formally shift their citizenship as a result of a more appealing set of policies and ideological affiliations. According to Saverin’s attorney: ‘U.S. citizens are severely restricted as to what they can invest in and where they can maintain accounts. Many foreign funds and banks won’t accept Americans’, adding that Saverin has lived in Singapore since 2009 and feels that the city-state is ‘an attractive place to live and a convenient travel hub for doing business in Asia’ (Mahtani, 2012: C3). While some would argue that Saverin is merely trying to avoid hefty taxes, the economic logic reflects an underlying ideological perspective. For example, The Guardian described Saverin as embracing a form of free-market radicalization, whereby a citizen is more trusting of a laissez-faire market system than of a state perceived as misallocating tax revenues or placing undue restrictions on private citizen behavior (Gillmor, 2012). At a minimum, the decision reflects a prioritization of personal wealth accumulation and challenges the revenue model that many states depend on for their livelihood (Soros, 1998).

Buyers

Why do citizens engage in the market for loyalties? Human nature includes an innate fear of social isolation and, early on, we demonstrate the need for acceptance into something greater than the individual self: a community (Neumann, 1974). Before the existence of mass media, children were born into a family that would serve as an immediate community and eventually introduce other elements of their collective communities – friends, aunts and uncles, colleagues, and so on. Today, mass media, and increasingly social media, play an important psychosocial role in establishing community, or put another way, shared knowledge, norms and interests.

Ulrich Beck (2005) argues that one consequence of the rapid globalization witnessed in the past 25 years is the shattering of the traditional means of community formation and maintenance, both in relations to the hyper local (e.g. family) and the societal (e.g. nation). Similar to how parental units introduced their children to the local community, the nation-state, on a larger scale, was the primary means through which citizens engaged with the international community. This, of course, is changing given the nature of modern communications networks. Before commercial satellites, 99 percent of communication occurred within the boundaries of the nation state (Pelton and Oslund, 2004: 27). Anderson’s conception of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ worked because nation-based media were shared among diverse groups, constituting shared histories, stories and knowledge. As information flows become more difficult to control at the level of the state, and as communications technologies become more mobile, affordable and globally connected, people began to form their own imagined communities, not based on the established authority and tradition, but rather on their personal interests, ideas and passions. Globally connected media offer a more robust market for news, information and entertainment, each of which, in turn, shape the modern citizen’s loyalties and sense of citizenship.

What do radicals have in common with people only modestly shifting their allegiances? Radicalization is an extreme, whereby a citizen necessarily defects from his or her home country, pledging allegiance to an alternative strategic actor and its ideological worldviews. Short of radicalization, foreign information flows influence citizens with the potential to shift loyalties from one strategic actor to another. While radicalization represents one end of the spectrum, less severe defections can also have consequences for a state’s security. From the perspective of the state, new information flows not only risk full-scale defections (e.g. radicalization), but also minor defections, whereby citizens split their loyalties between several actors, or simply become less and less concerned with their home state. As citizens become less eager to back a state’s policies, tax revenues are likely to decrease and support for war efforts may quickly fall. If a state becomes desperate and, as a result, resorts to violence to ensure citizen compliance with state regulations, its citizens may challenge the government’s legitimacy among domestic and international actors. Tunisia, Egypt and Syria each present compelling anecdotes of how quickly a state’s legitimacy and prospects for survival can fall. Even in the case of Syria, where President Assad has managed to survive, events on the ground will weaken Syria for years to come, thereby making it less able to compete economically and militarily. Not only is the Arab Spring a stark reminder of how quickly citizens can threaten a regime’s survival in draconian conditions, but it also demonstrates how foreign information flows act as critical variables in shaping the modern citizen’s loyalties (Ghonim, 2012).

Implications

Two theoretical approaches, thus far, have dominated international communications research addressing the question of radicalization: propaganda and dialogue. Yet, when examined using contemporary, empirical analysis, each has flaws. For example, given the growing complexity of information sources, the propaganda approach as a prescriptive one is woefully outmoded. Audiences can too easily dismiss foreign information campaigns that fail to satisfy their increasingly potent ability to fulfill their media preferences. Alternatively, propositions for ‘dialogue’ in public diplomacy outline a dialogic disposition, which involves two-way communication, listening as well as speaking, calling for a constructive, ethically-grounded intervention into a foreign public sphere (Kiehl, 2006; Lynch, 2002, 2005; Peterson, 2002; Zöllner, 2006). Yet this model is rife with political impracticalities. Increasingly media-savvy publics will be skeptical of promises of dialogue, which require genuine (nonstrategic) listening and a willingness to change policies on behalf of state actors (Riordan, 2004: 8). States are not likely to change their policies based upon the opinions of foreign populations, because governments are not accountable to them in any direct or institutional way. It is improbable that any government will listen to the degree promised by the term dialogue.

Viewing radicalization as part of the broader spectrum of possibilities in a market for loyalties is helpful for practitioners in a number of ways. First, radicalization operates within the confines of a state-based international system, whereby radical values or actions compare to the shared values and behaviors of a nation-state. Radical attitudes and behaviors in one context may not be radical in another, and nation-states remain the primary building blocks of the international system. The relative significance of non-state actors is measured vis-à-vis their threat to a nation-state or states, and their ultimate goal is typically some form of state-status and/or sovereignty.

This does not leave the concept of radicalization devoid of value; rather, it suggests the parameters of radicalization research. Such parameters are productive in providing clarity in defining the terms and scope of the required policy mechanisms. Combating global radicalization from a conceptual level is extraordinarily challenging as every country defines radicalization vis-à-vis local customs and values. Combating radicalization at the domestic level is possible, and is something that every government already does through the regulation and manipulation of its information ecology, in addition to using traditional law enforcement tools.

Locating radicalization as a state-based concept is instructive for foreign policy too. Actors interested in destabilizing foreign countries use information interventions to compete for citizen attention and loyalty, thus weakening foreign governments. For example, America’s commitment to a right to free expression, including extraordinarily hostile speech, is seen as an extremist belief by the governments of China and Iran. Freedom of expression is a central part of ‘21st-century statecraft’, according to Hillary Clinton. As the global competition for power is increasingly intertwined with ideological battles over how society should be structured, and governments compete to defend and extend their ideological interests, global information flows and interventions may inherently be seen as potentially radicalizing. This includes English-language jihadist chat rooms, but also the efforts to establish a universal right to freely connect to the internet. Thus, this ‘soft’ side of power, typically seen as a subsidiary to the use of force, is increasingly capable of engendering hard-power responses. Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, for example, was as much a reaction to Western cultural influence as the presence of American troops in Muslim-majority countries. Given the existence of and continued interest in increased constraints on the use of force against other states, these tools for soft influence, operating with fewer legal constraints while shaping the markets for loyalties, could easily become the central arena for geopolitical competition in the years to follow.

Second, historically, emerging communication technologies reshape how societies negotiate power and legitimate authority. From the creation of the alphabet to the printing press, technologies that enable new forms of expression necessarily force established political institutions to adapt or die. Each technology has specific biases that benefit particular actors. As societies moved from spoken to written word, for example, orators had to compete for authority that previously illiterate populations bestowed. Digital information technologies need to be understood in this historical context. They have specific biases that are different from analogue and interpersonal communication, and actors that are best able to adapt to the tactics of digital communication will be the ones best suited to lead in the 21st century. While a discussion of the specific biases of digital communications technologies is outside the scope of this article, governance and policy require rethinking in the modern Information Age. Forward thinking policymakers should understand how major information technologies impact power relations in national and international contexts, and apply this analysis to policies aiming to help states establish and maintain legitimacy with domestic and foreign audiences. Moreover, once analyzed through the market model, the maintenance and manipulation of loyalties could be guided by empirically grounded micro-economic principles, including: supply and demand; perfect competition; market failure; resource allocation; optimal welfare; opportunity cost; transaction costs; information asymmetry; signaling; behavioral economics; and saturated, latent, ignored, missing and lost markets.

Third, the market for loyalties provides a model for understanding the different ways actors compete for influence, including efforts at radicalizing foreign citizens. The market analogy identifies state and non-state actors and citizens as strategic entities, buying and selling goods and services, driven by perceived needs and desires. It also provides a rubric for understanding the different means by which states can defend against radicalization, at each of the levels of policy, communication, technology, and infrastructure. For example, in response to a growing threat of homegrown radicalization, a state could utilize new technologies to connect with or monitor its estranged citizens, enact policies incentivizing nationalism and de-radicalization, launch a robust counter-radicalization information campaign targeting the most vulnerable populations, and/or alter the communication infrastructure by levying hefty taxes on internet data coming from or being sent abroad.

Similar to how Henry Ford’s commercial car disrupted the market for horses early in the 20th century, digital information technologies, and the internet in particular, have opened up the market for loyalties in transformative ways. But the 21st century will not be nearly as chaotic, or deviate from traditional geopolitics as many digital evangelists would like to believe. States adjust. Demands for governance will grow. Chaos breeds structure and stability. The market for loyalties provides policymakers with a model for understanding all of the different pieces of the puzzle that may otherwise seem like an uncontrollable, unmanageable global grab for power. States compete for power and influence in an international market of loyalties. Other actors compete, though typically not at the same level as states as they lack the policy tools and resources governments are able to wield. States are engaging in an ideological conflict over the restructuring of societies. Actors create new information flows, and create the infrastructure that enables the dissemination of new information flows to strengthen their capacity to compete in the marketplace. Similar to commercial markets, they team up and form cartels, strengthening their place in the market vis-à-vis competitors. The strongest states will be those able to identify the specific material and ideational needs, target populations and create structures, policies, and programs to sustain citizen loyalties, both at home and abroad.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Shawn Mathew Powers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University. His research specializes in international political communication, with particular attention to the geopolitics of information and technology policy. Dr Powers is a faculty affiliate of GSU’s Transcultural Violence and Conflict initiative and co-leads its British Council and US Institute of Peace funded project on Civic Approaches to Religious Conflict. He is also an Associate Director at the Center for International Media Education where he co-directs an Open Society Foundation sponsored project on Critical Thinking in Iraqi High Education. Dr Powers is on the Board of Advisors for the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

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