Case Study: Analyzing Discourse on Extremism in Europe

The way that the media portrays different stories can highly influence popular opinion. While social media continues to expand its presence and reach, traditional media outlets still carry substantial weight in society. 

In the past years, there has been a rise in the conversations around extremism throughout the European Union, which has led to a resurgence of the extreme right-wing fueled by xenophobic arguments and behaviors.

The Background

A few years back, we worked with some of our clients to analyze how traditional media outlets were talking about terrorism, violent extremism, and the extreme right-wing online. This would allow them to advise local governments on public perceptions around these topics, developing intelligent communication campaigns and actions in a more informed manner. 

The Solution

Living in the era of content generation, keeping track of all stories and how they are portrayed is a mighty task. That's why we used our media monitoring engine MEDIA to look into five different topics presented by traditional outlets: extremism, counter-terrorism, radicalization, Daesh, and the extreme right-wing movement. We created a monitor consisting of a series of rules for each topic. 

Over the course of four weeks, our Research team regularly analyzed the status of the monitors and drew conclusions based on the volume of data, top keywords used, general sentiment distribution, peaks in the discussion, etc. At the end of the project, we gathered all these insights into a report for our clients’ use. 

The Results

Ultimately, we gathered more than 200,000 mentions from different media sources - showing how the European media portrays and cares about these topics. We saw that negativity still seems to shine, with content carrying a negative sentiment being overall more successful - with the help of the tabloid press to push it.

Click here and discover how our MEDIA engine can help you explore and analyze relevant stakeholder opinions and topics related to your organization, and empower your public relations strategy with real‑time media listening.