The Format and FEAR Model as an Answer to New Radicalization Challenges

Abstract

In the last decade, radicalization has been assumed to be a heterogeneous phenomenon, often overcoming ideological barriers. Moving from a set of premises, emphasizing the crucial role of current societal changes and contexts where radicalization processes take place, the added vision discussed here is an innovative paradigm focusing on the importance of emotions, feelings, and sentiments within the communication strategy adopted to prevent and reveal radicalization, defined accordingly as a “mood strategy”. What emerges from this analysis is methodologically threefold: a new model of communication strategies; a promising format tool to assess the radical milieu where the radicalization attitudes incubate, fostering radical processes; a comprehensive FEAR Model, leading to a new emotional dimension of communication strategy. Moreover, from a theoretical perspective, the prominent finding is that terrorism has to be identified as a violent and cultural act, going beyond the motivational reasons for the terrorist actions.