CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Fehrenbach, Sophia Maria Franziska |
|---|---|
| Title | Preventing Radicalizations Of Covid-19 Deniers? A Theoretical Discussion Of Communities As Pcve Resources |
| Summary | Covid-19 deniers challenge the foundations of democratic societies because they are openly antisemitic, have violent potential, are denouncing societies’ underlying (scientific) facts, have proven to radicalize people from all strands in life and are likely to stay after the end of the pandemic. This thesis therefore aims to understand how radicalizations of further Covid-19 deniers can be prevented. Specifically, it explores how communities who are thought to be effective yet largely underutilized resources in Prevention and Countering of Violent Extremism (PCVE) can best get involved in these prevention efforts. Because of the novelty of the topic, there is little available research on Covid-19 deniers. Through twelve semi-structured interviews and a thorough literature review, this thesis nevertheless identifies large-scale mistrust, belief in Conspiracy Theories (CTs) and support for (scientific) populism as the Covid-19 deniers’ three main characteristics and Emotional Resilience, Education and Political Participation as the three best community PCVE tools. It discusses how these tools respond to the three characteristics and finds that Emotional Resilience and Education succeed to respond to mistrust and CTs, whereas Political Participation can prevent the support for (scientific) populism. Communities should thus employ all three tools together to prevent radicalizations of further Covid-19 deniers. |
| Supervisor | Sitter Nick |
| Department | Public Policy MPA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/fehrenbach_sophia.pdf |
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