Combatting Violent Extremism Through Media and Awareness

The School of Peacemaking and Media Technology in Central Asia with the financial support of the Democracy Commission of US Embassy in the Kyrgyz Republic is implementing the project intended for early warning of extremist propaganda, by building rapid response for radical discourse via the media and communications strategies.

The analysis of media sphere and internet carried out by the project experts shows that religious intolerance takes one of the top places among all media phobias and can contribute to the conveyance of extremist ideology. The media often form their content based on news events found on the internet. On the one hand, they provide the audience with more diverse information; on the other hand, they can retransmit the ideas of extremism once they get caught by the propaganda. Moreover, when covering extremism and related issues visual content from various online sources is being widely used. This content is often the propaganda of radical narratives leading to violent extremism.

Based on the researche findings, project staff has developed recommendations and tools of combating the propaganda of violent extremism in media and internet such as training programs for journalists and activistc, as well as models of media campaigns on how to treat these issues in the public domain.

"In our project activity, we apply the peacemaking approach to countering hate in the media as an early warning of extremist propaganda” I. Sikorskaya, Director of the School of Peacemaking and Media Technology in CA, said. "Today journalists, internet activists and communicators have found themselves vulnerable to the propaganda of extremism; so our task is to teach them how to effectively respond to the radical discourse.”

In the framework of the project, journalists and activists will be trained the tools that will help them detect extremist propaganda, use advanced methods to report extremism, humanize Islam in stories to overcome the image of the enemy and reduce the risks of extremism propaganda, respond adequately to destructive online communications.