Radicalization

The Research Group Radicalization investigates the causes and dynamics of radicalization processes (topic 1) as well as their effects on societies (topic 2). In the first topic, radica­lization processes within radicalized milieus as well as dynamics of cumulative radicali­zation and co-radicalization are analyzed. In the second topic, the counter­measures of the state and of civil society actors and the consequences that result for society are taken into consi­deration.

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The Research Group thus builds on the existing research traditions of PRIF in the areas of terrorism and poli­tical violence, transnational violence, prevention and political education and compa­rative conflict research. Furthermore, the research group bundles them across disciplines and across pro­gram areas in relation to research on various (transnational) political pheno­mena and religious radica­lization.

Although these analyses of the complex causes and dynamics of radicalization as well as their perception in po­litics and society are located in basic research, the research group also fo­cuses on the dialogical transfer of know­ledge through a wide network of practice partners.

Head of Research Group

Hande Abay Gaspar

Hande Abay Gaspar

Julian Junk

Julian Junk

Research Fellows

Shaimaa Abdellah

Shaimaa Abdellah

Susanne Johansson

Susanne Johansson

Mona Klöckner, Foto: PRIF

Mona Klöckner

Jonatan Kurzwelly

Jonatan Kurzwelly

Rebecca Frei

Rebecca Lindenstruth-Frei

Lotta Rahlf

Lotta Rahlf

Lea Deborah Scheu

Lea Deborah Scheu

Ute Seitz

Ute Seitz

Manjana Sold

Isabelle Stephanblome

Isabelle Stephanblome

Laura Stritzke

Laura Stritzke

Sina Tultschinetski

Sina Tultschinetski

Constantin Winkler

Constantin Winkler

Linda Schlegel

Linda Schlegel

Lars Wiegold

Lars Wiegold

Associate Fellows

Masood Al Hakari

Masood Al Hakari

Holger Marcks

Holger Marcks

Maximilian Ruf

Maximilian Ruf

Victoria Scheyer

Annika von Berg

Annika von Berg

Clara-Auguste Süß

Clara-Auguste Süß

Knowledge Transfer Officer

Franziska Heil

Franziska Heil

Student Assistants

  • Baum, Max
  • Geyer, Philipp
  • Hohe, Chantal Elisabeth
  • Kollmuß, Lena
  • Pfeiffer-Rooschütz, Levi
  • Stein, Maya
  • Würdemann, Sophie

Projects

The consortium project KURI aims to support politics and society in finding basic, practice-oriented answers to the problems of dealing with islamism in Germany and Europe.

KURI – Configurations of Social and Political Practices in Dealing with Radical Islam

PrEval is a joint project to strengthen evaluation and quality management in the areas of extremism prevention, democracy promotion and civic education. The focus of its work is on dialog with professional practice in order to (further) develop formats and structures in a needs-based and practical manner. PrEval is an open network that makes its findings accessible through various transfer formats.

PrEval

Islamism has a deep impact on various areas of society. Media debates change the image of Muslims as a whole and trigger dynamics of polarisation. As a threat scenario, Islamism justifies far-reaching security policy measures, prevention approaches, and the funding of numerous research projects. To support this field of research and make the insights more visible, the RADIS transfer project provides support for a research network on Islamism by organizing joint events and pooling various knowledge transfer formats.

RADIS – Transfer Project Social Causes and Effects of Radical Islam in Germany and Europe

The PRIF subproject of the RadiGaMe research consortium analyzes extremist activities on gaming and gaming-related platforms, in particular the communication dynamics in these digital spaces. PRIF is also responsible for knowledge transfer within the overall network and organizes exchange formats between academia, civil society, tech platforms and law enforcement agencies, among others. PRIF also focuses on the development and improvement of prevention approaches in digital gaming spaces.

RadiGaMe – Processes of Radicalization on Gaming Platforms and Messenger-Services

The MSCA doctoral network VORTEX brings together 8 universities and research institutes and employs 10 doctoral students. Its primary goal is to develop new, evidence-based and innovative strategies to combat ideological and behavioral radicalization.

VORTEX – Coping with Varieties of Radicalization into Terrorism and Extremism

Dissertations

Dealing with the threat of terrorism has shaped national se­curity agendas since 9/11. German poli­tics, too, reacted to what was per­ceived as a “new di­mension” of threat. The German approach, how­ever, relies on legal mea­sures and the rule of law, defining terrorism as a form of crime which has to be dealt with in legal terms (in contrast to the US “war on terror”-approach). Conse­quently, numerous laws concern­ing counter­terrorsim have been passed on the fe­deral and state level since 2001. They cover a va­riety of legal areas, reflect a broad concept of security and have repea­tedly trans­formed the frame­work of national security. Some mecha­nisms of the rule of law have been challenged or over­whelmed by these trans­formations: Risk-manage­ment and prevent­ive measures intend­ed to enable security agen­cies to act as far ahead of the situ­ation as possible also invade areas pro­tected by the Grund­recht (funda­mental rights) and dilute basic prin­ciples such as the presump­tion of inno­cence.

In her disser­tation project, Isa­belle Stephan­blome exa­mines the legis­lative reactions to terrorism in Ger­many within the field of tension bet­ween politics, law and inse­curity. To this end, different strate­gies for controll­ing inse­curity are typolo­gised and argu­ments for their legiti­macy are ana­lysed. The em­pirical basis for this is the legis­lation of the federal govern­ment and selected Bundes­länder (states). The legal texts as well as the docu­ments of their drafting pro­cesses will be exa­mined with an inter­pretative approach in a quali­tative case study. The project is located in political science legal research and aims to contri­bute to opening up law for security studies as a state instru­ment for pro­cessing uncer­tainty.

Isabelle Stephanblome

Isabelle Stephanblome

Doctoral Researcher

Dealing with post­migrant diversity is a current challenge for state insti­tutions in Germany. Demo­graphic change as well as debates on racism lead to pressure to deal with quest­ions of belong­ing, represen­tation and partici­pation of people with migration back­ground. In Germany, an effort by police to address and employ people with migrat­ion back­ground in recruit­ment cam­paigns can be observed. However, this diversi­fication does not necessa­rily lead to institu­tional change due to the estab­lished cop culture and organi­zational culture.

Even if there is no para­digm shift yet, a change in the way the German police is dealing with post­migrant diversity can be observed. This disser­tation project uses ethno­metho­dological methods and quali­tative inter­views to investi­gate under­standings of diver­sity within the German police by analyz­ing practices of creat­ing diver­sity.

Lea Deborah Scheu

Lea Deborah Scheu

Doctoral Researcher

Radical positions are current­ly on the rise again in many Euro­pean coun­tries as well as in Ger­many, and anti-demo­cratic and anti-emanci­patory ideas are sprea­ding. Hate crime is on the rise, espe­cially online, and comments and state­ments in the virtual world are beco­ming more uninhi­bited. This develop­ment has become particu­larly evi­dent for seve­ral years in the pheno­mena of Sala­fist jiha­dism and right-wing extre­mism.

By winning over more people to right-wing or Sala­fist ideo­logy and increa­sing the willing­ness to use vio­lence within the scenes, the mobili­zation strate­gies and tech­niques of extre­mist actors seem to be pay­ing off. By means of a quali­tative con­tent ana­lysis of Facebook con­tent of Salafist and right-wing extre­mist actors, Man­jana Sold investi­gates in her disser­tation project which mobili­zation techni­ques are used by diffe­rently radi­cal indivi­duals and which differen­ces can be observed within the pheno­menon areas.

Manjana Sold

Doctoral Researcher

This PhD project in­vestigates the rise of antifeminist conspiratorial mobilization in Germany, fueled by conservative, Catholic, and right-wing actors who oppose gender e­quality as well as queer and trans rights, because they view them as causing societal collapse due to the ero­sion of “natural” gender roles. Support of anti-feminism is not easily under­stood from a psychological needs perspec­tive, as it entails an opposition to politics which promise emanci­pation for many. The particular form of conspiracist opposition to these politics further­more connects them to anti­semitic notions and supports a perceived urgency to defend oneself against the supposedly femi­nist elites. This PhD project aims to ex­plore how individuals of different gender identities nevertheless experience political empower­ment within these movements and how they view those they perceive as threatening. Employing a mixed-method approach, in­cluding interviews and online narrative analysis, the project aims to explore the socio-psychological mechanisms by which indi­viduals gain political agency.

Mona Klöckner, Foto: PRIF

Mona Klöckner

Researcher

So-called Reichs­bürger (‘citizens of the Reich [German empire]’) are not a new pheno­menon in Germany. However, recent events, such as the investi­gation into ‘Patriotische Union’ (‘Patriotic Union’) since December 2022, the Covid-19 protest move­ments, and several serious acts of violence have been high­lighting their increasing socie­tal relevance. And yet, the currently existing body of knowledge is highly fragmen­ted which hinders an in-depth analysis of this particular ideo­logical spectrum and its followers. Interestingly, preli­minary analyses suggest potentially substan­tial differences between the Reichs­bürger follo­wing and the followers of other, better-studied extremist pheno­mena. This relates to, for example, demo­graphic factors, social dynamics, and forms of organisation. As a result, existing concep­tualisations of radica­lisation cannot easily be transfer­red to Reichs­bürger, which necessi­tates new and dedi­cated research into the topic.

In his disser­tation, Maximilian Ruf investi­gates indivi­dual pathways and causali­ties of radica­lisation of Reichs­bürger in Germany based on biographical-narrative interviews. The over­arching aim of the project is to generate and syste­matise new knowledge on Reich­sbürger radica­lisation and to de­lineate it from other radica­lisation pheno­mena in order to identify new starting points for further research and practical develop­ment.

Maximilian Ruf

Maximilian Ruf

Associate Fellow

Lotta Rahlf’s doc­toral project syste­matically compares how evaluations of efforts to prevent and counter violent extre­mism (P/CVE) are structu­rally organised across Europe. By mapping various ‘P/CVE evaluation systems’ and exami­ning factors that may explain their differences, her disser­tation draws attention to the variety of ways countries orga­nise the generation of evaluative know­ledge to respond to increasing demands for evidence-based P/CVE measures. Filling crucial theo­retical and empirical gaps in P/CVE research, Rahlf parti­cularly examines the levers that make P/CVE evaluation sys­tems more centralised in some countries and more decen­tralised in others. This means that her disser­tation explores why P/CVE evaluations are strongly controlled by the govern­ment in some contexts while such activities are more distri­buted among several entities, including civil society, in others. After a com­parative mapping of evaluation manage­ment in the P/CVE field in Europe, she will use qualitative compa­rative analysis (QCA) to analyse which factors have an influence on certain designs of such eva­luation systems. Based on the results, Rahlf will then select three countries to analyse their respec­tive evaluation systems in depth. This disser­tation, which is part of the EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD network VORTEX, also has a high prac­tical relevance as it enables P/CVE practi­tioners and policy makers to learn from other European con­texts.

Lotta Rahlf

Lotta Rahlf

Researcher

During the last decade terro­rist attacks by so-called lone wolf terro­rist have occurred. The attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway and Arid Uka in Germany are just two examples of this growing pheno­menon. Those perpe­trators act alone and allegedly radica­lize alone. Yet, radicalization research high­lights the importance of social ties in radica­lization and mobilization to terrorism. Therefore, one has to pose the question, how lone wolves radica­lize, if social ties are highly relevant in radicali­zation, yet the main feature of lone wolves is supposedly their lone­liness. To date little research has been conducted to address this puzzle systemati­cally on a theore­tical or empirical basis.

In her disser­tation project, Annika von Berg addresses the question how social ties affect radicali­zation processes of lone actors. To answer this question, an identity-theory-based model will be used to examine these radicali­zation processes in single-case-studies via pro­cess-tracing. The case studies will investi­gate incidents in the field of right-wing extremism and Islamism extremism.

Annika von Berg

Annika von Berg

Associate Fellow

Cogni­tive radicali­zation is charac­terized by an individual’s accep­tance of a certain extre­mist ideo­logy. It is widely believed that contem­porary radi­cali­zation processes of both jihadists and right-wing extre­mists are partially shaped by the narra­tives and stories extre­mists postu­late in their propa­ganda. In many cases, the consump­tion of these narra­tives takes place in the digital sphere.

Consider­ing that narra­tives are per­ceived as crucial for radicali­zation processes, it is unsur­prising that narra­tives also feature promi­nently in efforts to prevent and counter (violent) extre­mism (P/CVE). Narrative cam­paigns against extre­mism, often labeled counter-narratives and alter­native narratives, have become a prominent yet heavily criti­cized tool to mitig­ate the impact of extre­mist narra­tives online.

In her disser­tation, Linda Schlegel exa­mines an aspect that has been conspi­cuously absent from the current litera­ture on P/CVE narra­tive cam­paigns: How can good story­telling support the per­suasive effects of narra­tive cam­paigns against extre­mism? To this end, she trans­fers insights on narra­tive persuasion in other con­texts such as enter­tain­ment-education efforts, to the P/CVE field. The aim is to demons­trate the impor­tance of high-quality story­telling in counter-extremism efforts and show that narra­tives against extre­mism can be improved signifi­cantly by build­ing upon existing insights on narra­tive persuasion generally.

Linda Schlegel

Dr. Linda Schlegel

Researcher

Publications (Selected)

  • How can research on topics surrounding radicalization, extremism, and terrorism be safe and socially sustainable?
    | 2024
    Ahmed, Reem; Klöckner, Mona; Sold, Manjana (2024): How can research on topics surrounding radicalization, extremism, and terrorism be safe and socially sustainable?, PRIF BLOG.
    Publication
  • Gaming the System: The Use of Gaming-Adjacent Communication, Game and Mod Platforms by Extremist Actors
    | 2024
    Winkler, Constantin; Wiegold, Lars (2024): Gaming the System: The Use of Gaming-Adjacent Communication, Game and Mod Platforms by Extremist Actors, Global Network on Extremism & Technology.
    Publication
  • Evaluating extremism prevention efforts: Insights from 14 countries
    | 2023
    Rahlf, Lotta; Ebbecke, Sophia; Bressan, Sarah; Herz, Angela (2023): Evaluating extremism prevention efforts: Insights from 14 countries. Interview with the PrEval working package on International Monitoring, PrEval.
    Publication

News

New RADIS web talk series on Islamism
The PrEval Monitor presents results from two years of research on evaluation in the prevention of extremism, democracy promotion and civil education
Linda Schlegel successfully defends her dissertation

Completed Projects

Extremist political views have been experiencing a boom. From July 2017 to Febuary 202, the project used an interdisci­plinary and systematic comparative approach to investigate the current state of radicalization research and to propose recommendations for com­bating radicalization while also strengthening democratic values.

Gesellschaft Extrem. Ra­di­ka­li­sierung und De­ra­di­ka­li­sierung in Deutsch­land

The project group PANDORA particularly examines discourses in social media and asks, which mobilization and radicalization effects these generate in the real world. Discourses and mobilization strategies of right and salafist actorson the Internet are systematically analyzed and mapped.

Projektverbund PANDORA

With its work, the research project contributes to the state of academic research on the phenomena of Salafism and Jihadism in Germany as well as to academic policy advice in this field.

Salafism in Germany