BEYOND POLARISATION
A GUIDE ON US-VERSUS-THEM NARRATIVES, THEIR DYNAMICS, AND HOW TO INTERVENE
Written and edited by: Hannah Richter, Jordy Nijenhuis & Edwin van de Scheur
Polarisation is on the rise. Black-and-white worldviews are drowning out the Grey Middle Ground with its countless opinions, identities and nuances.
Dare to be Grey aims to take back control. With our platform for refreshing perspectives, challenging opinions and personal stories, we will finally take the attention away from the us-versus-them narratives.
Join us, share your story, and Dare to be Grey!
With these words, we welcome both old and new visitors to our online platform. Ever since Dare to be Grey’s launch in March 2016, we have made it our core objective to promote the voices and stories of those who choose to build bridges rather than create divisions. Through conversations with professionals and fans, as well as critics of the platform, we have been able to continuously shape our conception of what polarisation is, and how we should deal with it.
In Beyond Polarisation we present a complete, yet concise overview of our take on polarisation. This guide will help readers understand how Dare to be Grey defines polarisation, how us-versus-them narratives spread, and how we turn these theoretical and empirical observations into concrete interventions, both on- and offline.
We hope it motivates you, the reader, the activist, the fan, and the stakeholder, to help us in our mission to go beyond black-and-white thinking,
― Team Dare to be Grey
DEFINING POLARISATION
In ‘Defining Polarisation’ we begin by defining polarisation through its three key aspects: the process of growing divisions, the narrative, and the downward spiral of escalation. We also take a closer look at the revolutionary, new dimension of the internet, which introduced us to a completely new set of social interactions that influence the age-old phenomenon of polarisation.
THE MAPI-SPIRAL
The MAPI-Spiral is Dare to be Grey’s own understanding of the actors involved in the dissemination of polarisation. The media, the audience, politics, and the internet all equally share responsibility, either consciously or unconsciously, in a downward spiral of interactions. Each with their own specific roles and incentives, these actors can push our society further down the path of polarisation. We provide a couple of practical recommendations that can safeguard them from polarisation in the future.
THE GREY NARRATIVE
As Dare to be Grey strives for a holistic intervention across many different corners of society, we believe it is crucial to have a consistent narrative at the centre of all our activities. We call this narrative: the ‘Grey Narrative’. The narrative consists of three, interconnected layers: the ‘Core’, the ‘Grey’, and the ‘Dare’.
