An effective slogan must be colloquial and memorable to work — not necessarily grammatical, referring to the slogan “Do good, do together” chosen by Former Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob for her Elected Presidency campaign. It is precisely why modern actors — whether advertisers, political parties, governments and even terrorist groups — must fight hard to achieve information dominance over a target audience.

This is because only through such control can the actor attain the ultimate goal of capturing the hearts and minds of the constituency in question. Hence the various slogans that comprise a wider overall narrative simply must be “catchy, easy to understand, easy for everyone to relate”.

This is certainly no less important in the domain of countering violent extremism, or CVE. How then can one employ such slogans to achieve information dominance over the likes of the Islamic State (IS)? Four factors are important: The message, the messenger, the mechanism and market receptivity.

… Associate Professor Kumar Ramakrishna is Head of Policy Studies and Coordinator of the National Security Studies Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. He is the author of Emergency Propaganda: The Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds, 1948-1958