Counter-Narrative

H.L. Goodall, Jr.

In this book I portray a world caught up in the middle of a narrative arms race, where the message of the political right has outflanked the message of the political left. It is a world where narratives used by the far right inch ever closer to those employed by right-wing extremists in the Muslim world. 

Rather than dismiss the use of political narratives as a shallow tactic of the opposition, I promote their usefulness and outline a number of ways that liberal academics can retake the public discourse from the extremist opposition. 

I also show how to use stories effectively to move the world away from extremism and toward social justice.

Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism

Jeffry Halverson, H.L. Goodall, Jr., & Steven R. Corman

This book is about the ideological functions of master narratives that exist in Muslim societies and culture and how these narratives are exploited and employed specifically by Islamist extremists. We provide a detailed analysis of the historical origins, components, and manifestations of more than a dozen master narratives employed by extremists in their ideological rhetoric, propaganda videos, and public statements. The material presented in this book is based on the premise that narratives are powerful resources for defining cultures and framing actions, and it is particularly important to understand how they operate if we hope to understand and counter them. In other words, narratives are essential to understanding Islamist extremism in the “war of ideas.”

For additional information, please see the website created especially for the book.  It includes examples, updated resources, and useful links.  It is at: http://masternarratives.comops.org/

Weapons of Mass Persuasion

Strategic Communication to Combat Violent Extremism

Edited by
Steve Corman,
Angela Trethewey,
H.L. Goodall, Jr.

"Mandatory reading for all who conduct public diplomacy, those who study it, and those who feel its pervasive effects."
- John Arquilla,
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School

You may wonder, as we three editors of this volume often do, how otherwise ordinary American academics from the Communication field got involved in the so-labeled “Global War on Terror?” What caused us to move from the safety and relative security of our university-sculpted tenured lives into the ongoing conversations about combating ideological support for terrorism, the role of communication in public diplomacy, and other questions about this new “rugged terrain” of fear, danger, lies, death, and loathing? Here is the short version of what happened.