Quarterly internal update
Dear all,
Welcome to a new internal communications output, designed to give you - at a glance - an understanding of all the programming currently ongoing at ISD. We recognise that there are an ever-increasing number of projects being run across the organisation, and wanted to give you the ability to keep track of them.
As such, this email contains a summary of our current programming, working to safeguard democracy and human rights, grouped according to how they make change: Analysis, Action, and Policy Advisory.
This product is the first of its kind, and any feedback, positive or constructive, is welcome. Special thanks to Josephine, our Comms Intern, who made this product happen.
All the best,
Tim
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Beam Capability
In October 2021, ISD and CASM Technology won the US-Paris Tech Challenge for our analytical tool Beam. The technology detects, tracks and measures online manipulation, disinformation and harassment. It is available in a number of languages and can be used across a variety of platforms, including Facebook and YouTube. |
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Information warfare on Wikipedia
After our win (above) at the US-Paris Tech Challenge, ISD and CASM begun a pilot study to detect suspected state manipulation of Wikipedia, with insights to be shared with government and civil society partners. A report will be published this month detailing our state-of-the-art methodology for detecting coordinated activity on Wikipedia. Project lead: Melanie Smith.
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Preventing targeted hate against Jewish communities
Since March 2022, ISD has been working with the Anti-Defamation League to build a data system to prevent targeted hate against Jewish communities. Working with CASM technologists, we have created a system with a ‘green list’ of synagogues, schools, Jewish cultural institutions, civil society organisations and public figures. This ‘green list’ is then checked against the activity of a ‘red list’ of known antisemites on public Facebook Pages and groups, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and 4chan. Project lead: Jacob Davey, Milo Comerford.
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Cross-platform spread of disinformation and extremist content
We are developing methods of tracking and modelling based on the hypothesis that celebrities and influencers across platforms act as catalysts for disinformation and the spread of content. This will use tracing and predictive modelling of information networks together with natural language processing methods. We are developing and testing automatic data pipelines from the platforms, using two examples: right-wing rappers and the ‘biolab’ conspiracy in Ukraine. Here are some of our outputs: Hashtag Pairing is Being Used on Twitter to Facilitate Soviet Propaganda Tactic ‘Whataboutism’ and Support from the Conspiracy Corner: German-Language Disinformation about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Telegram. Project lead: Till Baaken.
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Researching the evolving online ecosystem
This is a new project, funded by Omidyar Group. It will provide technology platforms, governments and advocacy groups working on digital democracy and online harms with evidence and ideas to improve the transparency of closed, encrypted and fragmented online spaces. Project lead: Henry Tuck.
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US extremism monitoring
This project began last month and will build online analytical infrastructure to track extremist movements and conspiracy theorists in the US. Working with CASM Technology, we are co-designing infrastructure within our Beam analytics system to track ‘red lists’ of extremist accounts across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Telegram, 4chan and other extremist platforms and websites. This work will focus on activity in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as national-level extremism. Currently we are in Stage One of the project, focusing on co-designing the data system. Project lead: Jacob Davey.
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Kenya extremism mapping
We are working alongside journalist and Nobel Prize winner, Maria Ressa, and her team in East Africa, to develop a real-time dashboard for monitoring extremist and terrorist activity online in Swahili, Somali and Arabic. Our work identifies the strategies and tactics used by a series of malign actors online that are attempting to undermine sexual and reproductive health and democratic practices while also promoting violence. Project lead: Lara Petricevic.
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Analysis and threat detection in Georgia, US
We analyse key trends in election disinformation in Georgia and early warnings for extremist mobilisation and threats. We use ethnographic monitoring to track election-related disinformation and threats to election officials, election workers, and voters across in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona. Our monitoring includes fringe platforms like 4chan, Telegram, and Gab as well as ethnographic and automated listening on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
We also monitor disinformation narratives around voting and voter suppression, election processes, conspiracies and others potentially leading to online radicalisation in the context of the election in our target states. This year we delivered two onboarding sessions with government officials in Michigan and Arizona, including Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, in Michigan and Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, in Arizona. Project lead: Jacob Davey.
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COP War Rooms
After the success of our COP26 War Room, we are preparing for COP27. This includes advocacy with UNFCCC and the Egyptian Presidency. We will be leading another War Room effort, with preparations already underway and greater objectives for scope and scale that reflect a longer lead-in period. Our last COP26 War Room brought together staff and expertise from 10 organisations to analyse climate mis- and disinformation. Project lead: Jennie King.
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Hate, extremism and disinformation in Australia
Alongside CASM, we provided a series of data dashboards to RMIT FactLab’s researchers and journalists using the Beam capability. We also monitored and mapped hateful content and disinformation related to the Australian elections in real-time, examining the origins and traction among fringe party election candidates of the World Economic Forum ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory.
In addition, with Reset Australia, we tracked the content recommended boys and young men by YouTube and YouTube Shorts (the new, shorter video feature). We found that the algorithms of YouTube Shorts optimised more aggressively, showing more extreme videos within a relatively brief timeframe. Project lead: Henry Tuck.
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US Disinformation Federation
We are part of a coalition of research organisations, policy experts, advocacy groups and community groups combatting US information threats. We have been undertaking ethnographic research on hate and disinformation both in response to pressing issues, as well as to analyse long-term trends from large-scale ongoing data collection across social media platforms. Some of our outputs, include: Conspiracy Clickbait, Anti-Vaccine Content is Still Clocking Up Millions of Views on YouTube Despite Major Policy Shift and What’s New (and What’s Not) with News Front. Project lead: Melanie Smith.
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Automatic detection of hate speech
We are carrying out cross-platform analysis of the intersection of terrorism, extremism, hate speech and harmful conspiracy theories across Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Telegram and 4chan for the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom). Working with CASM, we have created a dataset of over 700 UK-relevant public accounts, channels, pages and groups, as well as developing new automated approaches for the detection of hate speech. Project lead: Jacob Davey.
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French elections disinformation research
We have been analysing disinformation during the French elections, and in November 2021 we began a policy and advocacy project for the 2022 French elections. Since June 2022, we have been focusing on the legislative elections, including mapping the disinformation ecosystem on social media in France. Our outputs, include: the sale of fake COVID-19 vaccination certificates, Gettr’s failure to launch and the most shared URLs on social media during the French election in relation to public opinion about the vote, among others. Project lead: Iris Boyer.
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SCN European multi-city exchange
In March we hosted a two-day, in-person workshop to explore the prevention of extremism, hate and polarisation through leveraging cities and other local authorities. We brought together 50 representatives from local and central governments and civil society in France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. We are now exploring a second collaboration with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to host a similar workshop in Cyprus in October 2022. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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SCN Trans-Atlantic: Finland and the US
We are leading a trans-Atlantic exchange on local, city-led cooperation against extremist- and hate-motivated violence, focusing on strengthening city-trans-Atlantic cooperation and building partnerships among local leaders and governments in the US and Nordic regions. It recognises that both sides of the Atlantic are facing hybrid threats that have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We brought together mayors, public/mental health practitioners, law enforcement, NGOs, academics and central government officials from Nordic and US cities for a workshop in Helsinki on 27-28 April 2022. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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Engaging policymakers to anticipate hybrid threats to democracy
Project AHEAD engages policymakers from the German Bundestag and Federal Ministries on disinformation about global health, migration, gender equality and climate change.
An online information session on migration-related disinformation will be held in June 2022. We will then develop training materials over the 2022 summer break. The last online information session for 2022 will be on disinformation in relation to gender equality and climate change. Project lead: Till Baaken.
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Information manipulation during the war in Ukraine
Our outputs in relation to the war in Ukraine can be found on the hub on the ISD website. In April 2022, ISD joined the Disinformation Situation Centre, alongside over 40 organisations working to expose online disinformation about the conflict in Ukraine to various audiences, including government, media, corporate clients and the public. One workstream focuses on state media monitoring, tracking content from state actors and their affiliate networks about Ukraine. The other workstream looks at responses from tech to mitigate these threats using OSINT and ethnographic monitoring. Project lead: Melanie Smith.
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SCN in South and South-East Asia
We continue our regional expansion of SCN programming into South-East Asia. Delivered in partnership with the Global Center for Cooperative Security, the programme mirrors other SCN regional expansions, with city consultations, regional workshops, city exchanges and small grants. We have also partnered with the Global Center for Cooperative Security and the International Institute of Justice and the Rule of Law to deliver trainings on post-incident response, drawing from our Post-Incident Response Toolkit and the GCTF’s Rabat – Washington Good Practices on the Prevention, Detection, Intervention and Response to Homegrown Terrorism. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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US extremism Prevention Practitioners Network (PPN)
ISD is on the PPN’s Steering Committee, supporting the design, strategy and roll-out of the network. We are also responsible for developing the format and providing speakers for a minimum of 12 workshops for existing and prospective counter-extremism practitioners. We will be producing contextual briefing literature for each of these 12 workshops and producing at least six practitioner-focused toolkits on delivering counter-extremism interventions. . Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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German-language far-right ecosystem of ‘alternative’ online platforms
We continue our three-year project mapping the German-language far-right across alternative and established social media. We have been looking at how those in this ecosystem use links and what it can tell us about how they use technology. The reports will soon be available in English (e.g. 'Escape Routes' Fluchtwege, 'Signpost' Wegweiser and 'Pillars of Support' Stützpfeiler Telegram). Project lead: Till Baaken.
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SCN and the Global Counter Terrorism Forum
We are creating a counter-terrorism an implementation toolkit for specific regions, countries and contexts. Last year we held discussions to identify barriers, challenges and solutions to national-local cooperation and now we are in the process of in-depth mapping and analysis in three global regions to provide the background and foundational knowledge. The findings from these analyses, which will take place over the next three months, will form the basis of the toolkit. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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SCN mapping city-level needs and priorities for prevention in Africa
We are leading a project mapping the needs and priorities of cities and other local authorities in regard to preventing hate, polarisation and extremism in Africa. We will produce a report that will be presented at the opening of the 77th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2022. We have held virtual roundtables and two in-person workshops with local officials, national governments and civil society from across the African continent, as well as multilateral institutions like the African Union, UNOTC, UNDP and others. These will help inform the report. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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Digital Policy Lab
In the coming months, ISD will hold two working groups, as well as smaller online sessions exploring crisis protocols and algorithmic recommender systems. We will hold a DPL session in July 2022 to review government and platform actions in response to the war in Ukraine. The DPL is also looking to expand membership to include strategically important partners in Eastern and Central Europe in response to the war in Ukraine. Project lead: Till Baaken.
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Online extremism in New Zealand
We have provided ongoing and regular data snapshots, including a quarterly data visualisation of New Zealand extremism trends and ethnographic briefings analysing extremist-related phenomena. In New Zealand, these include the conspiratorial convoy protests in Wellington against COVID-19 measures, the monetisation of the New Zealand far-right and domestic online antisemitism trends around the Israel-Palestine conflict. Project lead: Milo Comerford.
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SCN in Kenya: PROACT community-based interventions
Our project develops a framework for interventions that can be delivered by existing community organisations in partnership with county governments, bringing a human rights-based approach to prevention and intervention at local levels in Kenya.
Since November 2021, the Community Engagement Framework and the associated Community Team model seeks to address local-level vulnerabilities and provide community-based support to prevent radicalisation. This is a pilot phase of the SCN’s globally acclaimed Local Prevention Networks. Grassroots interventions have been supported by six PROACT innovation grantees, including radio talk shows, online peace campaigns/dialogues, sporting for peace events and youth-police trust building initiatives. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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SCN in Slovakia
Alongside with Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia (PDCS), we have been implementing the Power of Cities project. This project engages local and national governments and civil society community leaders on preventing and countering racially/ethnically motivated violent extremism. In March 2022, SCN carried out city consultations in Slovakia in Bratislava and Žilina; we will publish a report with key findings and recommendations for city-led prevention in Slovakia.
In Phase II of this project, the SCN and PDCS are expanding these activities to six more countries in Eastern Europe, including Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. We are currently supporting PDCS deliver an eight-part online seminar series on the prevention of online and offline hate, polarisation and violent extremism in cities and local communities. We will also provide support and coordination for a two-day P/CVE conference in 2022 that convenes city officials and practitioners from each country, as well as deliver two city consultations. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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Shared Endeavour Fund
The Shared Endeavour Fund helps London-based grassroots organisations tackle violent extremism and hate crimes at the local level. We are now in our third year of working with Google.org and MOPAC supporting grantees. This has included creating selection criteria, taking part in the application review process and delivering monitoring and evaluation training. We are currently writing up assessments of each funded project based on the reporting they submitted.
We will also explore organising a SCN event to showcase the Shared Endeavour Fund model as an example of city-led support for hyper-local programming that can be replicated in other contexts. Project lead: Charlotte Moeyens.
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Young Cities has impacted 15 cities across 8 countries, where it has trained 483 young activists and supported the launch of 79 youth-led projects. This has directly impacted over 14,000 young people and reached more than 14.5 million youth around the world.
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Young Cities in Belgium
In 2022, we have expanded into Belgium. This two-year programme supports young activists and municipal stakeholders in the cities of Antwerp and Liège in launching locally-led initiatives that promote social cohesion and peace. Project lead: Jasmeet Sahotay.
Young Cities in Kenya
We have supported six youth-led projects in Mombasa and Kwale that used music, videos, research, workshops and creative performances to tackle a range of issues, including political apathy, gang recruitment, peer-peer violence and hate speech. We have also been supporting 18 young activists in Nakuru to counter the threat of electoral violence through street theatre, spoken word, short films and music videos. In 2022, we are combining these creative approaches with traditional capacity building, awareness-raising and advocacy activities to amplify their messages and generate more impact. Project lead: Jasmeet Sahotay.
Young Cities in North Macedonia
In 2022, we have helped seven groups of young activists in Gostivar and Skopje transform their projects, aimed at tackling pressing youth issues, into sustainable initiatives that enable longer-term impacts.
We also supported the municipalities of Čair and Gostivar in building upon the impact of their City Initiatives, including developing a sports programme that strengthens resilience and a digital citizenship programme. Project lead: Jasmeet Sahotay.
Young Cities in Jordan
We supported three teams in Zarqa to tackle cyber-bullying, discrimination and disinformation. These youth-led initiatives included puppet theatre to tackle discrimination, and research into the spread of disinformation among university students.
Working with SCN’s Local Prevention Networks in Irbid, Karak and Zarqa, Young Cities helped launch three City Initiatives. This involved conducting research and analysis to understand how religious scriptures are misappropriated by extremists (Irbid). We also helped organise theatre performances to raise awareness of inter-communal tension and discrimination in Karak, as well as career days and trainings for over 350 young people in Zarqa.
We also organised a showcase event (pictured below) connecting youth ambassadors with municipal government, NGOs, embassies, foundations and national organisations to demonstrate the impact of their initiatives. Project lead: Jasmeet Sahotay.
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YouthCAN and Young Cities
YouthCAN has officially merged with the Young Cities programme. YouthCAN has been active in 22 countries and trained more than 700 activists, supporting the launch of 40 youth-led initiatives. In July 2022, Young Cities will draw upon the lessons and methodologies of YouthCAN’s remote delivery model, combining them with Young Cities in-person work with municipal authorities, to implement a first-of-its-kind Campaign Academy in Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan. Project lead: Jasmeet Sahotay.
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Extreme dialogue Québec
Extreme Dialogue is a series of interactive resources for teachers, youth workers and those engaged closely with young people, centred on exploring the first-hand stories of former extremists and survivors of violence. We are working alongside Duckrabbit, The Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Foundation and the Montreal Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence (CPRLV). The project will produce and pilot two new French-language films and educational resources focusing on Canadian former extremists. Project lead: Jennie King.
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Be Internet Citizens (BIC)
BIC has provided young people across the UK with Digital Citizenship education against an array of online harms. More recently BIC have created an influencer-led series of videos hosted natively on YouTube, each drawing on a core concept or discussion point. We have provided educational oversight and expertise, as well as helped define the series structure, episode format, key messages and calls-to-action. Project lead: Jennie King.
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Reinforcing the societal response to extremism (RISE)
This 10-month project supports French CSOs tackle hate, extremism and radicalisation. We produced a research report that maps the online activities of French Identitarian actors across a range of social media, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. We also organised two events to present the outputs and key findings of the resources produced previously and foster networking and collaboration between the organisations of the RISE network. Project lead: Iris Boyer.
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