CONTRA: Countering Propaganda by Narration Towards Anti-Radical Awareness
Comissioned by: the European Union (Call: Preventing Radicalization to Terrorism and Violent Extremism" HOME/2014/ISFP/AG/RADX)+
Founding: University of Cologne: 304.452 EUR €, 2 x 13-TV-L
Total Budget: 812.000 EUR
Duration: 03.2016-02.2018 (24 Monate)
Consortial leader: Federal Police Office Germany (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA)
Projectpartners:
Gary Bente, Hans-Joachim Roth, Daniel Roth, Lena Frischlich (University of Cologne)
Peter Vorderer, Diana Rieger (University of Mannheim),
Manuel Torres Soriano (University Sevilla),
Protection of the consitution Austria,
Nationalcoordinator for terrorism defense of the Netherlands,
Götz Nordbruch (ufuq.de)
Summary: Europe is facing sincere security threats resulting from right-wing and Islamic radicalization of our youth. While radicalization has to be conceived as a multi-causal process, one of the major instruments to attract and thus potentially radicalize the young generation is the internet. Aside from school, the young generation spends most of their time in the internet (van Eimeren & Frees, 2013). Extremist online material therefore has a huge outreach even among so far unradicalized young adults (Rieger, Frischlich & Bente, 2013). It uses multiple formats, frames and narratives to address young people. Strategies to prevent radicalization consequently should start early and in vulnerable phases of development and our schools are a suitable place to implement coordinated measures on a European level. In fact, political awareness for extremist internet propaganda and critical media competence is so far not systematically taught in our schools.
The goal of the project is to use scientific results from recent extremism research to enhance awareness for radical media messages and to develop and evaluate practical and innovative approaches to teach critical media competence and foster political deliberation as a means to prevent extremist attitudes and behaviors among the young generation. We aim to lay the grounds for a counter-extremism school program, that can be applied in EU member states, increasing the capacity of first-line practitioners.
To achieve this goal the project will study the visibility, outreach and context of extremist and counter-extremist internet videos to identify relevant material for educational purposes. We will focus on right-wing extremist and jihadist extremist internet videos as the two forms with the highest level of outreach and current political relevance. Based on this we will develop and evaluate a prototypical teaching unit including: (a) the insemination of concepts and techniques to analyze form and content of media messages and their underlying manipulative strategies (media competence); (b) the use of this competence to form arguments and discuss positions with peers and parents (discourse competence); and (c) the transfer of knowledge and competence through pedagogical simulation games (action competence). The project will provide materials and methods for anti-extremist education programs and best-practice recommendations for teaching critical media competence in schools.
Keywords: Counter-Narratives, Prevention, Propaganda, Right-wing extremism, Islamism, School implementation