The Politics of Counter-Terrorism: A Study of the UK Government and Media’s Framing of the Prevent Strategy

This thesis examines how public consent is cultivated for counterterrorism policies by the government and the media, using the UK’s Prevent Strategy as a case study. It explores the research question: How have the UK government and British media framed the Prevent strategy?
Integrating securitisation theory, framing theory, and the cascade model, this thesis investigates how the UK government has framed Prevent as a necessary counterterrorism measure against an existential threat, drawing from War on Terror (WoT) discourse. This framing constructs terrorism—particularly Islamist extremism—as the primary threat, reinforces an “us vs. them” binary, and positions “British values” as under attack. In this context, Muslim communities are framed as both vulnerable and potentially dangerous.
A central contribution of this thesis lies in its empirical and methodological focus. It adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining Structural Topic Modelling (STM) and Discourse Analysis (DA). STM provides a longitudinal analysis of Prevent’s media framing (2006–2023), mapping identifying dominant topics and their evolution as well as ideological and stylistic variations. DA complements this by unpacking how media frames operate discursively within broader political and cultural narratives.
The empirical findings show that British newspapers—regardless of ideological leaning or newspaper style—largely reinforce the government’s framing of Prevent. Two main narratives emerge: right-leaning tabloids emphasise Islamist threats, portraying Prevent as essential to national security; left-leaning broadsheets offer broader, more critical perspectives but rarely present fully developed counterframes. Right-leaning tabloids have steadily increased their coverage, becoming the dominant media voice on Prevent. Counterframes—particularly from NGOs—remain marginalised in mainstream media. Although coverage of far-right extremism has increased in recent years, it continues to be framed less urgently and constructed differently from Islamist threats. These insights underscore the media’s role in shaping counterterrorism discourse, with broader implications for democratic accountability, minority representation, and media responsibility.