The Narrative Problem

Why do hostile narratives succeed? And what needs to change at a policy, politics and system level if we are to tryly address them? We have some thoughts. The key takeway - everything is communication.

THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE MESSAGE. IT’S THE VOID.

Hostile narratives do not succeed because they are sophisticated. They succeed because they are useful. 

Extremist ideology, populist nationalism, and foreign disinformation campaigns all offer something that democratic societies have failed to provi

de: a sense of belonging, a clear explanation of grievance, a compelling account of who is to blame and what can be done about it. 

They give people meaning, identity, and community. They tell people that their struggles matter and that someone, at least, is speaking to them directly.

We still systematically underestimate what hostile narratives provide whilst overestimating the appeal of what we offer in response. The communities most vulnerable to radicalisation and manipulation are not, primarily, people who have encountered a persuasive argument. They are people who have been left behind, economically marginalised, culturally displaced, ignored by institutions that claim to represent them. Hostile narratives move into the spaces that democratic society has vacated. They fill the void.

This means the problem cannot be solved by better messaging alone - although it is worth stating now that this does not exclude good messaging. However, a fact checked and rebuffed is not a counter-narrative. A government communications campaign is not a competing source of identity. Debunking a conspiracy theory does not address the underlying experience of exclusion that made the theory feel true. Until we understand that the information challenge is inseparable from the social and political conditions that create it, our responses will continue to arrive too late, speak to the wrong people, and leave the underlying dynamic untouched.

The question is not what hostile actors are saying. The question is why it resonates and what we have failed to offer the people who are listening.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS IS NOT COMMUNICATIONS.

The second failure is structural. Across governments and institutions, strategic communication is treated as a communications function, managed by press offices, delivered through campaigns, measured in reach and impressions. This is a category error that has compounded the problem for decades.

Strategic communication, properly understood, is not what you say. It is the deliberate alignment of everything you do, every policy, every action, every institutional behaviour to embed a coherent narrative through every available means. Everything communicates. When a government responds slowly to a crisis, that slowness teaches citizens something about democratic effectiveness. When institutions fail to address pressing concerns, that failure shapes understanding far more powerfully than any campaign defending democratic values. When the distance between what a government promises and what communities experience grows wide enough, no amount of messaging will close it.

The say-do gap is not a communication problem. It is a credibility problem. And credibility cannot be manufactured; it can only be earned, over time, through consistent and trustworthy behaviour that people can see and feel in their daily lives. This is why strategic communication, done properly, is as much about shaping action as it is about shaping language. It requires communicators to be inside policy processes, not downstream of them; to ensure that what is decided can be defended not merely explained; and to understand that the most powerful communication is often an act, not a statement.

Action is communication. Policy is communication. Silence is communication. The discipline begins not with 'what do we say?' but with 'what do we need people to think, feel, and do and what will it take to get there?'

THE WORK: RESEARCH-LED, PEOPLE-CENTRED, OUTCOME-FOCUSED.

The approach that follows from this analysis is straightforward in principle, though demanding in practice. It begins with research. Not as an academic exercise, but as an operational necessity. Before any communications effort can be designed, two questions must be answered honestly: what is the narrative threat, and why is it taking hold?

Understanding the narrative threat requires granular analysis of what hostile actors are actually saying, how they are saying it, through which channels, and to which audiences. It requires understanding not just the current state of the threat but its strategic direction, where it is heading, not merely where it is. This is not static work. The information environment changes constantly, and the research that informs strategy must keep pace with it.

Understanding why hostile narratives take hold requires something more demanding: genuine insight into the people most at risk. Their sense of identity, belonging, and purpose. The experiences that have left them feeling unseen, unheard, or deceived. The specific vulnerabilities that hostile actors are exploiting. This kind of understanding cannot be assumed or extrapolated from demographic data. It requires direct engagement, listening, not just monitoring, and it requires the humility to take seriously what we find, even when it implicates our own failures.

The purpose of this research is not to produce reports. It is to generate the insight necessary to design interventions that are targeted, credible, and likely to work. It is to identify the networks, voices, and institutions that can carry a counter-narrative with authenticity in communities where the government cannot go directly. It is to ensure that what we do matches what we say, and that what we say speaks to what people are actually experiencing rather than what we wish they were experiencing.

Ultimately, this is the work of building narrative resilience, not as a defensive posture, but as an active one.

Narrative resilience means being present in the communities that hostile actors target. It means competing for the allegiance of people who have not yet been lost, not merely trying to recover those who have. It means treating communications as a security function, not a public relations one. And it means accepting that the most important communication is not what we say about our values, but whether we demonstrate them, consistently, visibly, in the lived experience of the people we are trying to reach.