Preventive Communication: Emerging Lessons from Participative Approaches to Countering Violent Extremism in Kenya

There is no shortage of communications-based interventions in the field of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). However, strategic communications P/CVE initiatives – focused on the content of communication – have not been subject to rigorous, independent, published evaluations.Matt Freear and Andrew Glazzard suggest that those at risk of violent extremist influences should be seen not as subjects of an intervention but as agents in their own social environments, where their ability and opportunity to communicate is significant not only to shaping the responses of others but also to developing their own perspective. They describe a pioneering pilot intervention under taken in Kenya, and provide emerging lessons of the effectiveness of what has been labelled the ‘preventive communications’ approach to P/CVE.