Expert Investigations

Lets look at the narrative surrounding protests. Welcome to the third article in a series of five where I will briefly look at an aspect of protests each article.

Setting the Scene

The country and the world are increasingly becoming a fractious, violent, tumultuous place of unrest.

With the huge increase in false media, false hype, conspiracy theorist and self-appointed unqualified ‘sleuths and hacks’, are the population being led more proactively towards protests and disruptive behaviour?

Organised and established protest groups actively seek the publicity to fuel their cause and many groups have international reach, as well as those more localised protest groups who equally seek local and national publicity.

What Is Narrative?

The word ‘narrative’ suggests a need to examine the story: what is the case for the protest? This story will vary in many ways.

If the protest revolves around a national or international issue, such as climate change, energy, construction projects, or political discourse, the narrative may present a unified message across all protests or resonate locally and regionally. For example, an infrastructure project might trigger local unrest and protests for specific reasons, or political tensions may emerge in small areas for particular causes. The narrative can also have sub messages as well.

Protest Narrative Example: HS2

The narrative could highlight the ‘greed’ of businesses and organisations seeking to generate more revenue, pay higher dividends to shareholders, and increase funds for governments and local councils. Alongside this, the main national narratives could focus on:

  • Irreparable damage from climate change
  • Issues related to fossil fuel consumption
  • Unnecessary expenses benefiting the South and Midlands at the expense of the rest of the country

But the sub story may have a more local narrative:

A narrative often includes a counter-argument to the proposal or event causing the unrest. Not all narratives rely on sound reasoning and discussion, especially when driven by biased, inconsistent, and uncorroborated propaganda spread by protestors on social media. A notable example is the 2014 summer riots, during which far-right extremist groups hijacked the immigration topic to support their narrative of disorder (source: BBC). Protestors frequently present a perceived balanced narrative to bolster their belief that the event, construction project, or political position is incorrect.

Points of Highlight

Examples may include:

To re route a planned expansion to avoid a certain destruction or upheaval

To find an alternative to fossil fuel disposal of waste. Current at the time of writing as incineration of household waste documented as being the most least energy efficient. BBC analysis highlights disadvantages of incineration of waste (resource.co)

To redevelop residential property and not build on green field sites.

Not all believed balances will be based on knowledge of full facts and also a cognitive dissonance whereby protestors will not accept the true facts even when presented with overwhelming evidence to support the proposed actions to negate the need for individuals to protest.

Summary

As protests can be highly emotive events the narratives vary individually, locally and nationally and the narratives may also support the tactics and targets that protestors will pursue.

The detail of the narrative may give some indication of how to prevent or disrupt a disorderly protest, or who and what the tactics are.

Narratives work from the broad and general to the specific and a narrative can have many roads which arrive at other narratives and as such over long term protests the narratives will change according to the developments of the original and as such so may the protestors rationale, tactics and targets.

As a business that operates in the arena where protest and activists (may) be active it is sensible to be aware of the ‘narratives’ that are currently being presented and those than may arise to spark some form of protest or activist activity.

‘Narratives’ and protest reasoning is inexhaustive and I have highlighted a tiny sample across a variety of socio-economic subjects that are present today.

As a business, an individual, group or organisation who may be subject to the potential protest and activist activity there is a need to consider how to:

Prevent

Disrupt

Detect

Any activity. All businesses must adopt a business continuity strategy, working from the broad and general to the specific. Please take a look at the rest of the articles in the series to get a full picture:

  1. Protest Groups: An Introduction
  2. Targets: Who And What Are The Targets For Protests?
  3. Tactics: What Are The Key Strategies Behind The Protest?
  4. Resources: Investigative and Proactive Resources For Protests
More On Protest Groups

Many of the comments in this article are too complex to be discussed in this short article and the author seeks not to trivialise or overlook them, but merely use them as a conduit to support the narrative.

Get In Touch

David Kearns, a former Police Field Intelligence Detective, is the Managing Director of Expert Investigations Ltd, one of the country’s leading investigation agencies, who has worked with numerous organisations in helping to prevent, disrupt and detect protest activity for the commercial sector.

07879 482902

Davidkearns@expert-investigations.co.uk

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