Spring 2015 Project Brief! 1

P2P: Challenging ExtremismA CVE Youth Initiative

Current Challenge

Violent extremists, as defined by the U.S. Government, are “individuals who support or commit ideologically-motivated violence to further political goals.” The ideology and goals of violent extremist groups vary tremendously, covering a wide range of issues from nationalism to the environment to particular interpretations of different religions. This Challenge uses the term “violent extremism” to refer to non-state actors and individuals who fit this definition.

The most visible manifestation of violent extremism currently is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has launched an unprecedented social media campaign to radicalize and recruit. While there are many other violent extremist groups from a variety of backgrounds that need to be addressed, ISIL illustrates the challenge and may portend how violent extremist groups more generally will use social media in the future.

• Even when Twitter blocks violent extremist accounts, users often just add a digit to their old account and attract hundreds of followers in just a few days, highlighting the challenges.

ISIL-linked extremists use Twitter, Facebook, Ask.fm, Kik, What’s App, You Tube, SoundCloud, JustPaste, Instagram and other digital platforms to promote their messages, disseminate pictures and videos, and directly engage potential recruits.

Previously, violent extremists mostly engaged through password protected websites and chatrooms; now they directly engage broad populations in the open, leveraging sophisticated social media capabilities and strategies to dramatically amplify their reach. ISIL, for example, created a Twitter application (Fajr al-Basheer, or Dawn of Good Tidings) that uses member accounts to send out tweets on its behalf.

• ISIL also uses bot networks (networks of hijacked computers) to disseminate messages. In a single day this past summer, ISIL supporters sent out 40,000 tweets, and they often repetitively tweet specific hashtags at particular times of day to maximize the likelihood that their messages trend.

• ISIL strategically leverages hashtag campaigns to tap into trending topics in Twitter that have nothing to do with violent extremism. Supporters, for example, have used World Cup and Ebola related hashtags to reach broad audiences.

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Violent extremists have used social media to focus group messages, disseminate ideological simulator games (such as a first player shooter games based on Grand Theft Auto and animated games for children), and broadcast high production videos. ISIL, in particular, has outpaced governments and private sector actors in its use of digital technologies and is arguably winning the online propaganda war.

While ISIL’s use of social media is the most sophisticated online terrorist communications operation to date, invariably other violent extremists will learn and borrow from its approach. Governments have become so alarmed about this trend that they recently held high level meetings with technology companies, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft to discuss cross-sector collaboration to counter online radicalization. One senior counterterrorism official described U.S. technology companies as the “command and control networks of choice” for violent extremists, underscoring the depth of concern.

Violent extremists have used social media to focus group messages, disseminate ideological simulator games (such as a first player shooter games based on Grand Theft Auto and animated games for children), and

broadcast high production videos. ISIL, in particular, has outpaced governments and private sector actors in its use of digital technologies and is arguably winning the online propaganda war.

While ISIL’s use of social media is the most sophisticated online terrorist communications operation to date, invariably other violent extremists will learn and borrow from its approach. Governments have become so alarmed about this trend that they recently held high level meetings with technology companies, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft to discuss cross-sector collaboration to counter online radicalization. One senior counterterrorism official described U.S. technology companies as the “command and control networks of choice” for violent extremists, underscoring the depth of concern.

The P2P: Challenging Extremism initiative provides an opportunity for students from the United States, Canada, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe to create an online community to counter a common enemy of violent extremists wherever they might exist. This is an important way to foster a sense of community between youth globally, and can help spread insights and lessons learned.

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Student teams are challenged to consider not only how they might counter current messaging and violent extremists use of digital technologies (a positioning of being against something), but also how to empower positive alternative narratives, models, and pathways that advocate for something, such as cultural and religious freedoms, economic production, opportunity through the power of innovation, and living in a civil society, for example.

Program Objectives

To design, pilot, implement, and measure the success of a social or digital initiative, product, or tool that: • Motivates or empowers students to become involved in countering violent extremism.• Catalyzes other students to create their own initiatives, products, or tools to counter

violent extremism.• Builds a community of interest/network focused on living shared values that also

counter violent extremism.

• Research indicates that narratives of hope and positive empowerment are just as important as directly countering extremist messages.

Target Market

The two target markets for this project include the uncommitted populations, the at risk, and the silent majority; the second group consists of civic-minded university students. The uncommitted populations and the silent majority can be represented by university students who oppose violent extremism but currently are not active in raising public awareness or broader prevention efforts. The at risk populations prevent radicalization and/or inspire them to engage in grassroots CVE efforts. These individuals should have the skills, focus, and passion needed to mobilize networks of people to counter violent extremism. Special focus should be given to individuals with technological skills who have already shown a proclivity towards civic activism, grassroots organizing, and network building activities. Students with backgrounds in social media, social movements, campaigning, marketing, public relations, terrorism studies, security and peace studies, and the ideologies of extremists are also of particular interest.

Students can use technology and digital tools to inspire and enable both online and offline activities. Because the internet is not constrained by physical space and geography, initiatives, products, and tools could affect people on and off campus. The priority, however, is to mobilize previously uncommitted university students.

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Program Submission

At the end of the program, each team is required to deliver a submission for review which should detail these items:

• Web presence for the initiative, product, or tool. Teams could set this up through a full website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any number of other digital platforms. Teams will also need to select a platform, or platforms, such as Skype or Google+ Hangout, or Facebook, for cross-cultural virtual exchanges for those teams who choose to incorporate this into their campaigns for coordination. The selection of a platform will depend on what is most appropriate for a team’s specific initiative, product, or tool as well as the country and target audiences.

• Any opposition to the initiative, product, or tool by influential individuals, groups, press, or social media outlets, and details about how the team addressed this challenge. Projects that address violent extremism invariably provoke negative reactions from some quarters (including potentially from extremist groups themselves), and we fully expect that at least some of the teams will face this challenge and need to find ways to navigate it.

• A summary of the prototype testing process, challenges, successes, failures, and results.

• A short video about the project (no more than five minutes long). The video can include testimonials, video footage of activities, team presentations, and other elements that help communicate the experience of creating and implementing the initiative, product, or tool.

Additionally, each team must keep a weekly electronic journal that tracks prototypes including: what worked, what didn’t, and why, which will be used to provide a retrospective upon program completion. This journal will be submitted each Friday throughout the spring term.

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Measures of Success

The most effective way to analyze results is to establish a benchmark of existing audience sentiment, identify the attitude or behavior change that would show a message’s impact, and then use a combination of tools to periodically examine progress. Intended outcomes can include awareness building, knowledge creation, attitudinal shift, or behavior changes. Measurement tools should be tailored to the behavior or attitude change the messaging campaign is intended to affect and ought to be used before, during, and following the campaign.

Common measures to analyze results include: polls/surveys, linking awareness to action, media metrics, qualitative assessment of shifts in audience responses, and extremist reactions.

Sample P2P: Challenging Extremism success measures include:• Number of people who access the

web portal for the initiative, product, or tool.

• Number of people who “favorite” the web portal or digital platform or otherwise indicate their support for it.

• Number of people who join the initiative, participate in its activities, and/or download/use a product or tool. Teams should also measure the quality of involvement (participation in a single event vs. volunteering for ongoing activities, support for marketing a product or tool vs. simply downloading it once, etc.).

• Number of students on the team’s university campus who are aware of the initiative, product, or tool.

• Number of social media references to the initiative, product, or tool.

• Number of students who create their own initiatives to counter violent extremism as a result of their exposure to the team’s initiative, product, or tool.

• Number of organizational partners and/or sponsors for the initiative, product, or tool.

• The degree to which the project is self-sustaining. Examples of potential measures include financial base for continued operation; number of individuals or organizations that have agreed to continue the initiative, product, or initiative; number of independent “spin-off” initiatives and their reach; and products or tools that members of the target audience have created and plan to continue using (this is not an exhaustive list of potential measures).

• For teams that choose to incorporate the virtual exchange component of the program into their campaigns with international students, they should measure the students’ responses to the virtual exchange element via a survey or interviews. How did they work with their counterparts? Was it effective? How did the interaction and relationship building effect the campaign design and implementation?

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The Client

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. State Department is responsible for building mutual understanding between the United States and other countries through educational and cultural exchanges (see http://eca.state.gov/). It runs some of the U.S. Government’s premier exchange programs, including the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and the Fulbright Program.

Participants in ECA people-to-people exchange programs come from a variety of backgrounds, including musicians, artists, youth, women, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, journalists, scientists and dozens of other groups and professions. The bureau connects Americans with their counterparts in more than 160 countries and helps promote peaceful relations through enhanced cross-cultural understanding.

More than one million people have participated in ECA programs, and many alumni are leaders in their fields. • 364 are current or former heads of government; • 55 are Nobel Prize Winners; • 46 are members of the United States Congress; and• 80 participants from the Fulbright program have won the Pulitzer Prize.

Over the past two years, the number of participants in ECA programs has increased by 25%, reflecting the importance of these initiatives in American foreign policy as well as interest in ECA programs from people throughout the world.

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Current Marketing Efforts

Government and private sector/civil society social media efforts to counter violent extremism predominantly focus on countering extremist narratives and messaging.

• The U.S. Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC, www.state.gov/r/cscc/), for example, leverages digital outreach and social media to counter violent extremist propaganda and misinformation; highlight extremist atrocities and destruction; and discourage potentially vulnerable individuals from joining violent extremist groups (as an illustration, see Think Again, Turn Away at https://twitter.com/ThinkAgain_DOS).

• In some countries, religious scholars and propagators enter extremist websites and chatrooms to directly debate with violent extremists and convince them to renounce violence.

• In civil society and the private sector, social media frequently is used as part of a broader online/offline awareness raising campaign about the deficiencies of extremist arguments (for example, see MyJihad at http://myjihad.org/).

There are also public and private sector efforts to build online networks of individuals to counter extremism.

• The U.S. State Department has sponsored a small number of network building programs intended to mobilize individuals against extremism online. Generation Change, for example, connects youth across Muslim communities to promote action against extremism and positive role models. (https://www.facebook.com/generationchange.hq). Hours against Hate is another example and began as a Facebook call to action that asked young people to donate time to counter bigotry, which can help counter violent extremism (http://hoursagainsthate.org/).

• Against Violent Extremism is an online platform that helps connect former extremists, survivors of extremist violence, funders, and other partners to develop counter-radicalization initiatives. It is private sector partnership between Google Ideas, the Gen Next Foundation, rehabstudio, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (http://www.againstviolentextremism.org/).

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Few programs, however, focus on leveraging social media and digital tools to mobilize the uncommitted populations and the silent majority who oppose extremism. There are important exceptions to this, however, and this provides good example of how social media can be used to galvanize collective action.

#NotInMyName is a campaign that encourages individuals to get involved and speak out against violent extremism via social media. (www.activechangefoundation.org/portfolio-item/notinmyname/).

Program Flow

Assess the Messaging Landscape:• Research to understand the violent

extremist narrative and messaging strategy. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses and inconsistencies?

• Research to understand the broader context, to include socioeconomic grievances, key influencers, and current counter messaging activities underway.

Identify and Define Target Audience:• Based on your initial introduction

and research of the topic, identify the specific target audience profile for your initiative, product or tool.

• Your specific target audience should be aligned with the broader Target Market outlined above.

• Choose a specific goal for your messaging strategy, tailored to your target audience. Possible goals include:

o Among uncommitted audiences1: prevent radicalization and/or inspire them to engage in grassroots CVE efforts.

o Among radicalized audiences2: discourage mobilization to violence.

1 Uncommitted audiences include those who are either unsympathetic or neutral toward the violent extremist narrative.2 Radicalized audiences include those who agree with the violent extremist narrative but have not engaged in violence.

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Research: • Review program secondary

resources to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of CVE and the messaging landscape.

• Conduct a thorough audience analysis to assess the drivers of the target audiences’ perceptions—such as demographics, history, culture, attitudes, social concerns, and enduring values.

Build the Media Plan: • Develop an integrated project

plan and messaging strategy aimed at engaging your defined target audience that includes tailoring the message, finding credible messengers, and selecting media platform/s.

• Establish baselines in order to measure the effectiveness of your project based on pre- and post-implementation analysis.

o Establish benchmark of existing audience sentiment.

o Identify behavior/attitude change that would show message impact based on intended outcome (awareness building, knowledge creation, attitudinal shift, or behavioral changes).

o Tailor measures to the behavior or attitude change (polls/surveys, linking awareness to action, media metrics, qualitative assessment from the baseline, extremist reactions).

Project Analysis: • Capture specific quantitative and

qualitative metrics to demonstrate the positive impact of your chosen initiative, product or tool.

• Be sure to reference the measures of success outlined above.

Competition Submission:Develop a submission detailing your messaging goal and target audiences; strategy for reaching these audiences and media plan; initiative, product, or tool; measures of success; results; and recommendations for future improvements along with your program journal and short video.

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Branding Guidelines

Teams should create a brand for their initiative, product, or tool that makes sense for their concept, target audience, and country context. The brand should appear on all related materials, including the web portal, social media, and creative materials and products.

Teams control their own brands and therefore should not use the International Challenge Program Sponsor/Organization (ECA) as the project brand.

Important: The U.S. Department of State seal or any other inter-agency partner name, seal or logo should not appear on any student-generated creative material.

Quality Check & Approval

Using the template* provided, teams must submit a creative brief and creative samples for review to EdVenture Partners prior to any implementation and before any student budget funds will be distributed.• EdVenture Partners will review the creative brief and creative samples for feasibility

within time and budget constraints.• EdVenture Partners will review the creative samples, appropriate team logo use and

use of professional and acceptable images / imagery.

* Your EdVenture Partners Account Manager will provide the template as well as more information regarding the quality check and approval process.

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Program Budget

Each team will have the equivalency of a $2,000 USD budget for the challenge.• Quality check and approval of your

creative brief and creative samples is required before funds are distributed.

• Funds may be used for:- Supporting your team’s research- Creative and media concept

development and implementation- Production and/or rental of

promotional elements in support of project activation

- Other resource needs• Budget funds should not be used to

print copies of the final submission for the entire team.

Mandatory: An expense log and reconciled budget with ALL corresponding receipts must be included with of your team’s submission. Failure to provide a reconciled budget and receipts may lead to your team being disqualified from the competition.

Your team’s expense log and reconciled budget does not count against the regulations on the slide length and file size of your team’s submission.

Note: If you have any questions regarding the budget, appropriate use of funds, or the budget reconciliation process, please contact the EdVenture Partners Account Manager.

Submission Requirements

Submission for judging must meet the following requirements:

• PowerPoint or PDF file format only• 40 slides / 30 MB maximum,

including one slide dedicated as the executive summary

• This limit does not include your journal or short video

Teams are also required to submit:

• Working files of all creative materials produced for the campaign

• Electronic copies of all press hits generated and published creative materials

• Digital photos from any activities• Program journal (as detailed in the

Program Submission section above)• Program video (as detailed in the

Program Submission section above)• Opposition summary, if applicable

(as detailed in the Program Submission section above)

• Expense log with receipts due with submission

Submission Deadline: All submissions, expense logs and receipts must be uploaded to EdVenture Partners no later than Monday, April 27, 2015 by 5:00 pm EST.

* Prior to the submission deadline, the EdVenture Partners Account Manager will provide further instructions on the submission process.

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Submission Judging

Please refer to the Judging Scorecard for complete judging criteria.

From the submissions, the top two (2) North American teams and the top (1) international team will be selected from eligible submissions received on or before the Submission Deadline.

Top three teams will be selected and notified by Friday, May 8, 2015.

* See the Official Contest Rules for the complete judging process.

Competition & Awards

Teams will be competing for the chance to present their campaigns in Washington, D.C. to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. State Department and other intergovernmental agency senior leaders. Five students* and one faculty member from the top two (2) North American teams and the one (1) top international team will be invited to present.

The top two North American teams will receive:• All expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. for five (5) students and one (1) faculty to

present their research, project, results and recommendations.

The top international team will receive: • All expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. for ten (10) students and one (1) faculty.

Five (5) students selected from the ten will present their research, project, results and recommendations.

• This top international team will also participate in an in-person exchange program in the United States designed especially for them.

Scholarship Awards: $5,000 for first place $3,000 for second place $1,000 for third place.

Presentation Date: Thursday, June 4, 2015.

* It is the faculty advisor’s decision to select which five students from the team attend the final presentation.

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USE AND DISCLOSURE

Unless expressly stated otherwise, this document is confidential and intended for P2P: Challenging Extremism program participant use only. This document should not be shared or accessed by any other unauthorized party without the expressed consent of EdVenture Partners.

Copyright 2015, EdVenture Partners

P2P: Challenging ExtremismA CVE Youth Initiative

Spring 2015 Project Brief