Hay Festival: Terrorism as a teachable moment

Professor Martin Innes will be joining Chelsea Clinton, Gordon Brown, Michael Woolf, Michael Gove and many other illustrious figures to speak at this year’s Hay Festival.

The internationally-renowned literary and arts gathering, labelled by Bill Clinton as "The Woodstock of the mind", takes place over 10 inspiring days in late May, early June.

Festival-goers will be shown how by applying cutting-edge social media analytics, we can learn from past attacks about how terrorist violence tries to work. Terrorist attacks are designed to 'terrorise, polarise and mobilise' their multiple audiences. In a sense, then, they function as teachable moments, where the perpetrators try to teach 'a lesson' to their 'adversaries'. At the same time, however, governments use these events to instruct the wider public about the risks that have to be managed, and how public life and values will not be modified by them.

Professor Innes talk, ‘Terrorism as a teachable moment: analysing social media to understand public reactions to the four UK attacks in 2017’ will take place at 2:30pm, Wednesday 30th May on the Good Energy Stage, Hay Festival.

Tickets are available via the Hay Festival website.