Target Audience
Messaging is the bridge between understanding your audience and creating content that can influence them. It is not enough to simply have a good idea; the message must be clear in its purpose, credible in its delivery, adapted to the right medium, and connected to an achievable next step. In preventing and countering violent extremism (PVE and CVE) contexts, the clarity, authenticity, and tone are crucial in giving your message the best chances of landing.
Raising awareness or correcting misinformation (e.g., clarifying myths about perpetrators of terrorist attacks).
Highlighting positive visions of identity and belonging, showing what you are for rather than what you are against (e.g., youth campaigns celebrating culture, sport, or creativity).
Directly challenging violent extremist claims and discrediting harmful ideologies (e.g., formers exposing manipulation inside violent extremist groups).
Each type has strengths and limitations
- Alternative narratives can avoid confrontation but may fail to address urgent misinformation.
- Counter-narratives can be effective for audiences already questioning violent extremist views, but risk backlash if misjudged.
- Strategic communications provide clarity but may not shift deep-seated attitudes.
The best practice is to decide explicitly which approach you are taking and why, and then match the message to the needs of your audience. Effective messages are those that feel well-matched with what your audience already values or believes, while opening space for a different choice (Lee, 2023).
- What is your external message? - How can you tell your audience what your message is?
- What do you want your audience to do with the message? - Having a clear call to action (an instruction or prompt for the audience, usually asking them to take immediate action) will improve chances of audience interaction and help inform you of the influence your campaign has on the audience (for example, sign petition, share post, join network, attend event, comment on post). A meaningful call to action should clearly communicate a specific and achievable action, provide a sense of urgency, and connect the action to a larger goal or mission.
- What is the campaign slogan? - This can be just a few words that capture the essence of the campaign.
- What hashtags will you use for your campaign? And what hashtags might you co-opt? - Hashtags are useful for amplifying a message on social media, as well as providing a useful identifier for tracking the reach of your campaign online. You should consider hashtags that relate directly to your campaign, as well as write down pre-existing hashtags that relate to your content.
Once your message is clearly defined, you will need to pick the right messenger to deliver it!
The Audience Targeting section above should have helped you to identify influencers of your audience.
Now it's time to draw upon these when selecting the messenger of your campaign. The most important thing to remember is that your messenger must be a credible voice to your audience.
For example:
- The most credible voices to a person considering joining a violent extremist organization are more likely to be their core influencers such as family members and religious leaders, rather than the police.
- An organization looking to support individuals who wish to leave a violent extremist group may wish to use former violent extremists as its messenger.
- A campaign directed at persuading young teenagers from joining gangs may use older teenage boys to deliver the message.
- Keep in mind that not all campaigns require an individual messenger – some campaigns will be better served by an organizational or institutional messenger (for example, an organization's page serving as the primary point of diffusion).
- Always think of the campaign's objective when determining who the best messenger will be.
- Whoever you choose as your messenger, be aware that they will form part of the "face" of your campaign, and you will therefore need to ensure they are adequately supported and made aware of the potential risks they face.
The same words have different impacts depending on who says them. Audiences trust messages that come from people they already see as credible, authentic, and relatable. Selecting the right messenger is therefore as important as designing the message itself.
Bring credibility from lived experience inside violent extremist groups. Best practice is to co-create content with them, focus on specific lessons, and connect to clear exit pathways. Avoid retraumatisation and harassment.
Communicate urgency and human cost. Prioritise dignity and resilience, ensure survivors control their story, and provide support. Avoid hostile exposure or retraumatisation.
Often underrepresented but can be highly credible in family, school, and community contexts. Highlight women as leaders and role models, not only as victims. Prepare for potential harassment and avoid tokenism.
Provide moral legitimacy and can align prevention with faith-based values. Use existing community channels and avoid sectarian framing. Include a range of intra- and inter-faith voices to incorporate diverse perspectives.
Musicians, creators, gamers, or peers can deliver prevention messages in authentic formats. Allow creative freedom, keep asks small and clear, and avoid overt "counter-extremism" branding.
Practitioners must create a credible and trustworthy online presence. One way to achieve this is by investing time and thought into developing a well-thought-out profile that provides insight into their personality and background without compromising their privacy. A trustworthy online profile can help build familiarity and credibility that can bridge the gap even in a digital setting. Additionally, the communication strategy of the organization or program with which practitioners are affiliated should support trust-building prior to engagement with a campaign. By adapting the strategy based on the specific phenomenon, practitioners can ensure their online presence is trustworthy and effective.
- Choose messengers your audience already trusts.
- Provide safety, consent, and wellbeing support for individual messengers.
- Ensure organizational messengers are transparent and credible.
Messaging should not end with awareness alone.
It should give the audience a "call-to-action," i.e., something clear and achievable to do next. This might mean joining a dialogue, signing up for training, sharing a post, reporting harmful content, or following a support service.
Calls-to-action work best when they are specific, easy to complete, and emotionally engaging. Research highlights the role of emotions in moving audiences: pride and hope inspire people to build, while anger and fear galvanise resistance. In prevention campaigns, these emotions must be used carefully and always connected to safe, constructive outcomes (Braddock, 2024).
The final test of a message is not how many people see it, but how many take the next step. Track completion rates, not only impressions. Strong messaging moves people from awareness to action, and in doing so, builds the foundation for sustained prevention work.
- Best practice is to let audience research guide the choice of medium. Ask: where does this audience already spend their time? What formats feel normal to them? Start with pilots on one platform, track engagement, and then adapt. Match your tone, length, and visual style to platform culture rather than transplanting one message across every channel.
- Measurability: When developing messaging and tactics, it is essential to consider measurability and specificity. Positive interventions or strategic communication efforts should not merely increase knowledge, shape attitudes, and ultimately change behavior but also measure some form of reduction in violent extremist activity, presence, or support.
- What is the problem-set?
- What does the campaign/project need to achieve?
- How will it achieve these and through what tactics/approach?
- What types of intent, action and engagement will make these tactics work?
- How will these tactics and effects be measured in order to create outcomes?
- What is the problem-set?
- What does the campaign/project need to achieve?
- How will it achieve these and through what tactics/approach?
- What types of intent, action and engagement will make these tactics work?
- How will these tactics and effects be measured in order to create outcomes?
