Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PRACTICIES (Partnership against violent radicalization in the cities)

Teaser

PRACTICIES mobilizes a network of European cities, experts from the fields of humanities, political sciences, information sciences, etc. to better understand the human roots of violent radicalization, to characterize these processes and to build up concrete tools and...

Summary

PRACTICIES mobilizes a network of European cities, experts from the fields of humanities, political sciences, information sciences, etc. to better understand the human roots of violent radicalization, to characterize these processes and to build up concrete tools and prevention practices. PRACTICIES relies on the cooperation of the ‘on the ground’ experience of practitioners and the expertise of national structures in the fight against terrorism.

PRACTICIES is structured in the following lines of action:
• Document the risks & protection factors;
• Understand the processes of communication that promote or limit the spread of radical discourse;
• Develop and assess programs focusing on reducing community tensions and development of social cohesion;
• Create dynamics of dialogue between academic and social players around the understanding of the phenomenon of radicalization;
• Facilitate methodological and practical exchanges between researchers, stakeholders & cities;
• Identify good intervention or prevention practices;
• Assess the implementation and effectiveness of security programs facing radical actions;
• Create recommendations and solutions to be implemented for the security of end users.

Work performed

WP 2 - INVENTORY OF FACTORS OF INSECURITY AND RADICALISATION
Survey among young and older Europeans (14-24 and 25-50 years old) in twelve countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the Czech Republic has been conducted. The different tasks T2.1 (Survey design and methodology), T2.2 (Fieldwork and data delivery) and T2.3 (Analysis of the results) are fully implemented and finalised.

WP 3 - ETIOLOGY OF THE PROCESSES OF RADICALISATION AND RADICALISATION LEVELS TIPPING POINT
Research, based on a sample of 450 French individuals interviewed, during a period of 38 months, with a collection of direct source and analysed according to both a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Both tasks: T3.1 (Data collection grid for quantitative interviews) and T3.2 (Grid for qualitative interviews with parents and young people) are fully implemented. WP activity is finalised.

WP 4 - EARLY PREVENTION AND INCLUSIVE CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION. A three-fold participatory approach addressed to youngsters. T4.1. (Citizens Agora) at the end of month 18 was in a very advanced status. Most of the local projects have been implemented. T4.2 (Establishment of a digital space called ‘Digital Me’) started in September 2018 with the start of the school year, by reaching agreements with schools as well as consent forms from parents and students. Activity is just initiated. T4.3. (Creation with youth against - speech resources from a serious games) is advanced. The serious game is already designed. At the end of October its development was almost finalised.

WP 5 - POLICIES TO FIGHT AGAINST RADICALISATION . OVERCOMING IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS
Analysis of the current policies, regulation frameworks and strategies is ongoing in the 9 countries involved. Only the literature review was completey finalised at the end of the first reporting period. Task T5.1 (Preparatory work) was finalised in January 2018 and Task T5.4 (Local actors survey with self-assessment) in October 2018. Activity in the different tasks T5.2 (Current situation in prisons) is ongoing. T5.3 (Field research. Mapping and description of programs and actors in local policies) and T5.5 (Survey of young migrants and analysis of problems of inclusion and risk of radicalisation) are in development according to the calendar.

WP 6 - THE FIGHT AGAINST FAILURE AND SPEECH AGAINST SPEECH
Different research teams composed by specialists in language and education sciences combined qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of indoctrination speeches (terrorist, djihadist, bashing, Holocaust denial, racist and other extreme ideas). T6.1 (Terminological and lexical analysis), T6.2 (Enhanced semantic analysis for content characterisation) and T6.3 (Phonetic and argumentative analysis) have been fully executed and concluded at the end of October 2018. T6.4 (Discourse circulation) and T6.5 (Design of a model for studying radicalization) are still ongoing.

WP 7 - FIGHTING WITH EFFECTIVE TOOLS AGAINST DIGITAL RADICALISATION
Ongoing development of a technological crawler tool for the characterization and detection of resources and radical speeches addressed to security policy makers, LEAs, security practitioners at local level. Task T7.1 (Platform architecture) is fully concluded. Tasks T7.2 (Mechanisms and tools) and T7.3 (Software implementation of the monitoring tool) are now ongoing, according to the workplan.

WP 8 - WORKING GROUP OF CITIES AND DISSEMINATION
Structured exchange of practices and knowledge transfer among local authorities. Final recommendations will be addressed to policy-makers. Started the dissemination of project results to a wide network of local, national and European authorities and experts. The Working Group with 8 municipalities is constituted and fully operational (T8.1). Two of the four scheduled meetings of the Working Group have been already done. Experimentation activities of T8.2 are now on the planni

Final results

During the second reporting period, emphasis will be done in the following activities:
1. The WP5 analysis will be delivered with the results of the various prevention policies and will deliver concrete tools for the assessment of national and local public policies;
2. The interaction with professionals, politicians and practitioners of national and local level will be expanded. The role of Associate Members will be more promoted in order to bring together a significant number of practitioners and stakeholders. Interactions between practitioners in police, security, social work and education will be done through the dissemination of the public deliverables and some specific products (factsheets, handbooks, etc.) hat will be prepared and available both electronically and on paper.
3. PRACTICIES will meet significant impact by the finalisation of key tasks:
• WP4 The serious games on the digital platform will allow interactions and exchanges within families of young neighbourhoods. The presence of end users (teachers of the family) will be reinforced here.
• WP6 tools related to the breaking away discourse will provide a better understanding of forms of indoctrination; operational training
4. PRACTICIES meets this impact by implementing various tasks:
• WP6 Methods developed for linguistic and semantic analysis of open sources will provide a set of basic tools able to highlight novel and changing forms of content related to radicalisation. Grounded on volumes of virtual sources, those capabilities will support practitioners for early and effective detection of new clues of radicalisation, while improving their overall knowledge on various aspects of it.
5. PRACTICIES will provide a significant advantage compared to its peers as these algorithms will eventually work as a sieve to provide authorities with only a handful of suspicious user profiles, with a minimal false positive rate and true negatives.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.practicies.org.