The Media Role in Preventing Radicalization: The Police Students’ Perspective

This quantitative study aims to determine how the police perceive the role of the media in combating radicalization. The research was conducted on a convenient sample of 108 students of the Police Academy. The majority (70.3%) of the research participants are also police officers who work in police stations and police administrations, while the rest have no experience working in the police. Data collection was done based on a questionnaire developed in 2016 as part of an international project using the paper–pencil method. The results of correlation analysis revealed that the extent to which the media can prevent radicalization processes is statistically significantly positively related to four items that influence the occurrence of radicalization, so research participants who believe that the media can do a lot to prevent the process of radicalization are more inclined to think that people’s religious or other ideological indoctrination, the individual’s feeling of powerlessness, media reporting via newspapers and TV and online propaganda strongly influence the emergence of the process of radicalization. Future research should explore the perceptions of the overall police staff.