Protest stickers in the vicinity of UK university spaces:

a breach of the prevent duty?

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the protest sticker can serve as a potent catalyst of radicalisation within the vicinities of university campuses. Ubiquitous on street furniture surrounding these locations, protest stickers function as tangible points of ideological friction and territorial markers. By applying the theoretical framework of microradicalisation and reciprocal radicalisation, this paper argues that protest stickers have the potential to shape the radicalisation journey. This theoretical approach is substantiated by drawing on two distinct data sets of the author’s primary research conducted with 17 undergraduate students from universities in Bath, Bristol, and Cardiff and five sticker activists from across the political spectrum in the UK. The findings reveal that protest sticker producers explicitly design these materials to trigger the cognitive shift of microradicalisation and incite reciprocal radicalisation via territorial conflict. The journey towards radicalisation does not always occur via direct scanning of QR codes on protest stickers, instead a process of digital curation where protest stickers are photographed and amplified within social media echo chambers is identified. The failure to manage protest stickers on street furniture in the vicinity of universities may represent a breach of the statutory PREVENT duty placed on UK Higher Education providers.