Where do Facebook and the U.S. government turn when they need a fresh perspective on a serious and growing problem? For battling extremism online, they’ve tapped college students.
Last semester, students from Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) won an Honorable Mention in the Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism (P2P) competition for their website project, “Stories of the Stolen.” The competition—sponsored by Facebook, the U.S Department of Homeland Security, and EdVenture Partners—included approximately 70 teams from universities across the globe.
The P2P competition was created in 2015 to encourage students to develop and execute credible, authentic, and believable social media strategies against extremism. To implement the campaign, each team received $2,000 to craft a program with measurable impact on their campus, community and country. The top teams earn a trip to Washington, D.C., where they will present their campaign to high-level officials at the U.S. State Department.
The competition aims to develop cutting-edge campaigns and social media strategies to offset the effectiveness of extremist groups like ISIS, who have embraced digital media to disperse their message and recruit new members around the world. According to Pete Forster, senior lecturer and associate dean for online and professional education in the College of IST, the online recruiting methods of terrorist groups have been extremely effective.
“Online social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook offer effective recruitment programs for violent extremist groups who troll the internet looking for at-risk individuals,” said Forster. “The P2P program asks, 'What is the counter narrative to use for off-setting online recruitment and how can we create such counter-narratives to combat mobilization of new extremists?'”
Penn State’s project kicked off with a visit by Irfan Saeed, the State Department’s director of countering violent extremism. This unique opportunity offered the team insight about government policies to combat violent extremism and engage with one of the government’s leading specialists about threat. From there, the team, comprised of eight IST students, created an online memorial for victims of violent extremism. The "Stories of the Stolen" website is the keystone of the campaign that also includes social media profiles on Facebook and Twitter and tabling events across the University Park campus. The goal, according to team leader Mason Northrop, was to build a repository of stories about humans affected by terrorism and to raise awareness across campus of counter-terrorism efforts.
“We wanted all victims of terrorism to have their own space, and we found, while researching, that there is very little biographical information out there about victims,” said Northrop. “For instance, if 70 people die in a terrorist attack, the media might interview [family members of] three or four in depth. The other 66 have no voice, and we didn’t think that was fair.”
Northrop, a senior majoring in security and risk analysis, hopes that the website and its social media components will evolve into a searchable database of victims of all kinds of extremism throughout the world. The team is also working to make "Stories of the Stolen" more personal to the user.
Team member McKenzie Powell said that during the research stage, the team was inspired by the Holocaust Museum’s ability to connect people to victims by linking a single victim to a museum visitor. They hope to do the same by helping website viewers search a database for victims who might share similar characteristics, in hopes of gaining greater engagement with the public.
Because "Stories of the Stolen" was selected as one of 10 honorable mention winners, Northrop and Powell will represent their team this February in Washington, D.C., where they’ll present their project to experts in the field, practitioners, and other senior industry and government leaders on Capitol Hill. Northrop said it’s a great chance to showcase their website to a larger audience who sees the value in the service it provides. Ideally, the group—comprised of Northrup, Powell, and teammates Hope Weimer, Sean Parsons, Saige Ingram, Kody Kem and Alyssa Reddington— can find a partner organization that would enable them to continue their project in the future.
Regardless, four of the students have signed on to enter the website in the competition again this semester. The same rules apply, but this time the team feels like they’ve got the advantage of learning from past mistakes and a list of improvements they’d like to make. In addition to creating a searchable database on the website, they are also encouraging more students and families of victims to submit additional bios, and plan to host events that raise awareness of counter-terrorism and violent extremism.
To learn more about "Stories of the Stolen," visit their website or follow them on Facebook.