Europe and some of its countries are going through a politically and socially dark phase, characterised by the capillary diffusion and normalisation of hate speech, extremist narratives, passive acceptance of verbal violence which often leads to acts of physical violence and intolerance.
New media are the channels that more than any other allow the unrestricted proliferation of these harmful contents, where users are often exposes to a great number of hardly verifiable biased information, whose rhetoric contributes to the increasing feeling of closure and extremism against a number of alleged enemies.
For these reasons, it is necessary to intervene so that those people most vulnerable to online contents, namely young people, receive help, stimulus and tools which can support them to react and challenge extremist messages and radical thoughts diffused on the Internet.
This is the rationale behind the project D.O.B.T – Do One Brave Thing, which will produce, during the next two years, informative material and software tools:
- to help young people verify the truthfulness and reliability of the information they acquire on the Internet,
- recognise and challenge early signs of radicalisation and extremism within their family, social groups and online,
- develop a stronger sense of entitlement and initiative to advocate, through online and offline activities and campaign, against widespreading hatred and intolerance.
Furthermore, D.O.B.T will organise 8 bootcamps in Romania, Hungary, Poland and Italy to train at least 20 young people aged 16 – 25 and 2 schools to co-develop 4 Campaign Service Lines (CSLs) on
- Challenging Extremism;
- Recognising Extremism Online;
- Challenging Polarisation & Extremism Online;
- Civic Engagement Action.
On 16, 17 and 18 January, CESIE met in Cluj Napoca (RO) the other partners of the D.O.B.T Consortium, to kick-off project activities and exchange the best strategies to make the most out of this project and turn it into precious opportunity to make the Internet a better and safer place for all its users.
About the project
D.O.B.T – Do One Brave Thing is a two years project funded by Directorate-General Migration and Home Affairs – Internal Security Fund Police (ISF-P), Civil Society Empowerment Programme (CSEP).
Partners
The project activities are managed by the following partners:
- Coordinator: Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR) – Romania
- ZA CLOUD SRL (Zetta Cloud) – Romania;
- ActiveWatch – Romania;
- Instytutu Bezpieczeństwa Społecznego (IBS) – Poland;
- Budapest Centre for Mass Atrocities Prevention (BCMAP) – Hungary;
- Political Capital Policy Research and Consulting Institute – Hungary;
- CESIE – Italy.
For further information
Read more about D.O.B.T..
Contact justice@cesie.org
