RAN small-scale expert session: Conspiracy narratives: developing a tool to support families, Madrid 14 June 2022

On 14 June 2022, the RAN Families, Communities & Social Care (FC&S) working group organised a small-scale expert session in Madrid, Spain to lay the groundwork for development of a support tool for families dealing with relatives who believe conspiracy narratives. The participants were mostly practitioners working in family support or social care services, with experience in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) and/or tackling conspiracy narratives.

This was a follow-up session to the FC&S working group meeting ‘Supporting families in fostering resilience against (Covid-19-related) conspiracy narratives’ held on 28 and 29 September 2021. This meeting highlighted how families as well as practitioners in family support services are increasingly grappling with the question of how to effectively communicate on conspiracy narratives without compromising the relationship.

The 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic have coincided with and fostered the spread of disinformation and conspiracy narratives. Even though an increasing number of countries have ended many pandemic-related measures, conspiracy narratives are still in place – and are now also exploiting new developments such as the war in Ukraine.

This meeting sought to collect the information required for the groundwork for a support tool specifically catering to the needs of families in this situation, i.e. with a relative who believes conspiracy narratives. This paper presents the highlights of this meeting, which also serve as considerations for development of the tool.

Several overarching themes relevant to families with a relative who believes conspiracy narratives will be addressed in this paper:

1. how to analyse your own position and that of the relative who believes conspiracy narratives, before beginning dialogue;
2. guidelines for dialogue and discussion with the relative who believes conspiracy narratives;
3. how to deal with the related emotions, shame and stigmatisation.