Measuring Political Violence

This page presents the results of a two-years-long research project, which focused on the attitudes towards political violence in online and offline context. The project, entitled Developing innovative methods for comparative researches on violent radicalization among the youth to help prevention, was carried out by Political Capital. DEMOS UK – our British partner in this project – conducted certain aspects of the research. The project was supported by the European Commission programme ‘Prevention of and Fight against Crime’ (ISEC) and Open Society Foundations.

We launched our project based on the experience that, while good comparative data would be the necessary (but not sufficient) precondition of any good policy strategies and decisions to prevent political violence, exact datasets are often missing for comparing the different countries and communities from the perspective of the potential for the use of violence they have. The goals of our pilot project was to develop and pilot good traditional and new comparative research methods in order to assess the threat of violent radicalization by identifying the vulnerable groups in given EU member states where the justification and glorification of violence poses a danger. We hope this project helps us to gain a clear picture of violent extremism and its social-attitudinal background, increasing the effectiveness of prevention programmes in the future.

The research consisted of various activities. The study that summarizes the results can be downloaded by clicking the image below.

A projekt részeként 2014-ben két kérdőíves közvélemény-kutatási módszerrel vizsgáltuk meg az erőszakra való hajlandóságot, az erőszakos cselekmények elfogadását és általában az erőszakkal kapcsolatos véleményeket Magyarországon és az Egyesült Királyságban egyaránt. Az egyik módszer egy számítógéppel támogatott személyes megkérdezésen alapuló kérdőíves felmérés (CAPI), amelyet hazánkban az Ipsos, az Egyesült Királyságban pedig az Ipsos Mori végzett a rendszeres omnibusz mérésük keretében. A másik egy, a Demos UK által kidolgozott online kitölthető kérdőíves kutatási módszer (CAWI). Ennek során a válaszadók toborzása a Facebookon keresztül történt. Adott célcsoportba tartozó felhasználók oldalán hirdetéseket jelentettünk meg, amelyekben azt kértük tőlük, hogy töltsék ki a kérdőívünket. Az alábbi kutatási jelentésben részletesen bemutatjuk a kapott eredményeket, valamint a magyar CAPI felmérés mintáján lefuttatott többváltozós statisztikai számításaink alapján levonható megállapításokat. With two different types of surveys we examined the willingness to violence, the acceptance of violent acts and, in general, the opinions on and attitudes towards violence in Hungary and the UK in 2014. In the report below, we present the results of the research in detail as well as the lessons we learned through the multivariable statistical analyses of the sample of the Hungarian CAPI survey.

The study below gives a methodological insight into the results of our two-years-long research project. The first section reflects on the theoretical explanations of violent behaviour, followed by two (one domestic and another international) of the available datasets’ used for secondary analyses in the second part. The third part elaborates the methodological inferences of two new researches based on personal and online surveys in Hungary and in the UK. The fourth part deals with the information age’s challenges to collect and analyse “network-data” in the form of a social media mapping.

There has been a change over the last decade in the way people access, consume and produce media: a shift away from mainstream media and toward internet-based content and social media. Hateful or offensive content has been present on the internet from its inception. Radical right wing parties and movements are well established to be early and active users of social media, both as a way of producing cheap and rapid propaganda; creating a coherent group identity, and organising events and activities. The study below examines the way a selection of populist right wing pages on Facebook and Twitter accounts can shed some light on the way these groups use social media. Although it is increasingly recognised that these groups are active users of social media, there is a lack of research into precisely how they use it.

 The studies designed by Splendidea Communications Kft.