From Blades to Brains: A New Battleground

With the recent military defeat of Daesh, the group has lost grip on its Caliphate. What remains, however, is the ideological appeal of joining its cause. In this vein, Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism efforts must be reassessed and restructured to address needs related to countering the ideology and discourse of violent extremist groups and promoting a new alternative narrative.

This paper centres on these emerging needs with a focus on counter- and alternative narratives. It seeks to move away from the current tradition of typifying counter- or alternative narratives towards a thorough analysis of actual media messages produced in the West Asia-North Africa region. It follows through a critique and analysis of this media content, produced locally and in the region, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of existing attempts of managing radicalisation in Jordan.