The acclaimed show Derry Girls captures the lives of teenagers growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, blending political tensions with universal experiences of school, friendships, and identity.  But how relevant is it to today's teens?

Ongoing research led by Mitchell Institute Fellow: Religion, Arts and Peacebuilding, Dr Jocelyn Dautel, explores how adolescents still navigate the lingering effects of sectarian division, alongside new challenges like polarized information.

The Templeton World Charity Foundation funded research project, Communicating ‘Truth': Seeking and sharing polarized information amongst young people in a divided society, stems from an award-winning interdisciplinary collaboration across the fields of developmental and social psychology, anthropology, cultural evolution, and persuasive communication.  The research team includes 11 researchers across 9 universities.

The research is featured, along with adolescents’ perspectives, in a short video documentary Youth and Truth in Northern Ireland: Lessons for Reducing Polarization from Templeton World Charity Foundation’s 'Stories of Impact' by journalist and senior media executive Richard Sergay, as well as a three-time award winning podcast Youth and Truth in Northern Ireland (winner of the Gold 2024 dotCOMM, 2024 Gold Hermes Creative awards, and 2024 Platinum MarCom Award).

 

 

Key insights from the research are brought to life by the modern ‘Derry Girls’ (and guys) featured in the documentary:

 

1. Young people value the testimony of others over other sources, and especially trust beliefs of family around polarized narratives related to conflict.

In our survey of 463 adolescents ages 12- to 18-years in Northern Ireland, participants reported being most likely to ask another person for more information about a conflict-related polarized topic (e.g. whether or not the island of Ireland should be partitioned), over seeking information from other (potentially more objective) information sources like articles, documentaries, or online resources.  Moreover, when we asked adolescents what might lead them to change their beliefs about a polarized topic, they indicated that they were most likely to revise their views if their family held a different belief—more so than if the belief came from a close friend, their peers, or a teacher.  While adolescents often seek information from peers over parents for many things (e.g. what to wear, what music to listen to…), our research underscores the vital role that family plays in shaping young people's perspectives, especially in contexts with a legacy of conflict.

 

2. Interactions between young people from different communities can help break down barriers, but sometimes information gets lost along the way.

The same group of adolescents above also participated in a diffusion chain study, or in other words, an experimental game of telephone.  The first teen in each of 68 chains read and recalled a polarized narrative, for instance, discussing pros and cons of the Irish Language Act.  This recall was then given to a second teen, then a third, and a fourth.  Researchers analysed how the message evolved across each chain.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the nature of the game of ‘telephone', the information degraded quickly—more than half of the details were missing by the second person in the chain.

When the teens were recalling information about conflict-related narratives in Northern Ireland, even more information was lost than when they were discussing polarized information unrelated to conflict—in this case social media regulation.

These findings show both the potential and the challenges of cross-community interactions, emphasizing the importance of supportive environments, like shared and integrated education, to help teens navigate communication about contentious topics related to group identity and conflict across divides.

 

3. Separate schools in Northern Ireland teach different historical content, another avenue towards polarization.

To explore another layer of polarization that young people may face in Northern Ireland, we examined the content being taught in schools.  We gathered data from a sample of publicly available school websites to see what history classes students in Northern Ireland are taught in secondary schools.

Our analysis revealed a significant difference: 96% of Catholic-maintained schools offered content on ‘The Troubles,’ compared to just 46% of State-controlled schools.  However, when it came to non-conflict-related subjects, such as ‘Modern World Studies', there were no notable differences in class selection.

We also analysed the main textbooks across these history classes.  With the help of Natural Language Processing (NLP) text-mining analysis, we uncovered some intriguing trends.  In the textbook chapters covering the period of The Troubles—primarily taught in Catholic schools—the term 'violence' was the third most common noun.

In stark contrast, 'violence' didn’t even rank in the top 20 nouns in the equivalent chapters from the pre-Troubles era, which are mainly taught in controlled schools, despite that period also including two world wars.

Additionally, the terms 'Unionist' and 'Nationalist', representing the two main political factions in Northern Ireland, appeared significantly more often in the textbook chapters around The Troubles.

These findings highlight the divided nature of history education in separate schools; fertile ground for polarization.

Like the characters in Derry Girls, the young people in this research find themselves at the crossroads of a conflicted past and a hopeful, peaceful future.  Both the show and the research documentary highlight the resilience of Northern Ireland’s young people as they work to overcome inherited divisions and shape their own paths.

While Derry Girls uses humour and relatability to convey these themes to a global audience, Dr Dautel’s research offers a more in-depth psychological and educational lens, examining how and when adolescents engage with polarized narratives and how critical thinking and diverse perspectives can support peacebuilding efforts.

 

Dr Jocelyn Dautel

Dr Jocelyn Dautel is a Reader in the School of Psychology.  Jocelyn's research investigates the development of social cognition with a particular emphasis on how children and adults categorize others into social groups, and how these categories then guide further inferences and behaviour.