Dr Gordon Clubb on building trust and credibility in counter-terrorism

Welcome to our Research Interview Series where we hear from researchers across the School of Politics and International Studies making an impact in the field through their areas of expertise.

Here we talk to Associate Professor in Terrorism Dr Gordon Clubb about this ongoing research into counter-terrorism, from conceptualising de-radicalisation; the potential role of involving formers in counter/preventing violent extremism and peacebuilding; through to transparent communication in counter-terrorism.

Can you tell us about your latest research?

Right now, I’m working on transparent communication in counter-terrorism. Transparency is important in itself but many people assume that increased transparency will also help build trust and support – it’s not that straightforward, as more transparency can actually have the opposite effect, especially in policy areas like counter-terrorism.

We have started an ESRC-funded project to look at this issue further and it is exciting how much data we will be able to collect; it should help us understand in what circumstances transparency can build support and trust. For me one of the big motivators is knowing the potential practical implications – our research in a related project has already shaped counter-terrorism communications.

What motivated you to pursue this particular line of inquiry?

Sometimes I wonder how I got into studying transparency, which frankly sounds boring – however it is incredibly important that we find ways to ensure counter-terrorism policy is transparent. The interest builds upon my earlier work on de-radicalisation, and then with funding from Research England and others, I was able to shift more to counter-terrorism communications and using survey experiments, combining that with my passion for doing research that can make a practical difference.   

My other research focus is on credible messengers and I’m working on implementing standards across the field that can help support the involvement of credible messengers, specifically ‘former extremists’, working in violence prevention.

What do your initial findings reveal?

We did a study on transparency and the UK Prevent’s programme. Prevent has, in my mind, genuinely good online resources and they aim to encourage the public to engage with Prevent if they are concerned for someone they know. In essence the provision of policy information aims to build trust and support, overcoming barriers to reporting. We took as close an approximation to the information Prevent used in their website as we wanted to see the effects of policy information transparency on trust and support. The research found that, as hypothesised, this form of transparency typically had a negative or no effect across our measures – so the exact opposite of what was intended. However, we showed that other forms of transparency, shorter and focused more on explaining why decisions were made (decision transparency), had a more positive impact on policy support. Now in the context of counter-terrorism research and policy, I think that was a significant finding – we found about 40 publications and reports that were based on this positive linear assumption of transparency and our study is the first to not only look substantively at this subject but offers a considerable challenge. Of course, there’s lots of important research on transparency in other areas – I think we unlderplayed the significance of our findings there, as our study opened up new ground on the theoretical mechanisms behind the transparency effect.

Who has supported your research journey?

The ESRC project has formalised the research team now but from the early days of the project I’ve been working with Professor Graeme Davies at the University of York. At the beginning he very kindly supported/tolerated my foray into survey experiments, obviously improving the work significantly. Through him and other colleagues I think I’ve learned how to do a good job putting a survey design together, but frankly I’m utterly dependent on him to do the stats. Maths is not my strong point – my son is currently chasing me around the house asking me what the square root of x is just to get a rise out of me.

The ESRC project has allowed me to work with Mary-Beth Altier (New York University), Tarela Ike (Teeside University) and Emily Winterbotham (RUSI) – they are leading experts on the area we are looking at, bringing experience of mixed methods and different disciplinary backgrounds that are relevant to the project, and a huge amount of experience in policy. With have also recently signed a partnership agreement with the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund who have funded many projects across the world and have so far helped over 12,000 to rehabilitate and reintegrate.

How is your research making a difference?

The transparency research is early days in terms of making a measurable difference to academia. In terms of potential and vision, we want to encourage the adoption of greater transparency in counter-terrorism by incentivising it through communications that are effective in terms of public trust and support. Our focus is on rehabilitation and reintegration of violent extremists and public support for reintegration is a big challenge, therefore helping to find a way for programmes and organisations to communicate with communities and overcome those barriers to reintegration would make a real difference. We are partnering with GCERF and others to achieve this ambition, so the project has a global reach. The research has received a lot of interest in the UK from people across counter-terrorism – there is a genuine interest in how to be more transparent and to engage the public.

I have a few other projects that are further along and they have made a difference beyond academia – one has resulted in changes to a counter-terrorism communications campaign, another is reshaping practices internationally for including messengers with lived experience. The work on standards – which you can find more about here - is something I really care about as I see how it has a practical benefit. I’ve partnered up with INDEX and together we are helping organisations implement these practices, providing safeguards and confidence to all parties when employing people with lived experience.

What are the next steps for this line of research?

Presently we are writing up two articles from data from an earlier project – one of those is on decision transparency. Alongside that we are drafting the first survey design for the ESRC project and to help with that we have begun a few conversations with practitioners internationally.

Next up, we have an Online Community of Practice event with our partners, GCERF, which will pull together experts in rehabilitation and reintegration. Alongside that I’m working on my impact-focused project which is implementing standards for employing former extremists in violence prevention. It is exciting to see how this project starts to intersect and come together with the ESRC project, all under this broader theme of building trust and credibility within the sector. 

Further information

Gordon Clubb is a member of the Centre for Global Security Challenges, and can be found on LinkedIn here.

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