Extreme Dialogue

Extreme Dialogue is an Open Access Resource Centre which contains educational resources – including a ‘Teachers Handbook’, ‘Canadian Resources’, ‘UK Resources’, and summaries for educators – as well as videos and interviews. The project’s central aim is to ‘build young people’s resilience to violent extremism’ by encouraging critical thinking. Ways of achieving this include providing information about the impact, effects and signs of violent extremism, developing classroom activities and lessons for teachers, group exercises as well as creating a space for online discussion around some of the central tenets of violent extremist movements. The target group for the initiative is primarily young people between the ages of 14 and 18 in the countries that are most relevant to the project’s partnership – namely the UK, Canada, Germany and Hungary.
The project was funded by the Public Safety Canada via the Kanishka Project, and co-funded by the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union.
Partners include the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, film-makers Duckrabbit, and the educational charity Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace – all in the UK. Extreme Dialogue in Europe is supported by project partners West London Initiative in the UK, Cultures Interactive in Germany and Political Capital in Hungary.
Core: Young people aged 14-25. This age group were considered the primary target audience of the project as they are typically the most ‘at-risk’ to radicalisation. (Note: the educational resources are aimed at 14 - 18 year-olds but the films were considered to have value as a standalone counter-narrative for older audiences)
Halo: Teachers and parents across. Teachers were targeted as the primary intended users of the educational resources, and parents in order to raise awareness of radicalisation and to enlist potential advocates for the use of the films and resources with young people.

There are several intended objectives of the initiative:
(a) The short films aim to create a dialogue among young people, and to reduce the appeal of extremism by challenging various ideologies and activities, while allowing for more critical engagement from the viewers. They furthermore “offer a positive alternative” by demonstrating that there are indeed narratives and video material that actively counters extremist propaganda shared on the internet and social media platforms. These videos include narratives and interviews from
“a former member of the extreme far-right in Canada; a mother whose son was killed fighting for ISIS in Syria; a youth worker and former refugee from Somalia; a former member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) whose father was killed by the IRA; a former member of the now banned UK Islamist group al-Muhajiroun; a Syrian refugee now living in Berlin; and a member of a Roma community in Hungary targeted by far-right demonstrations.”
(b) The videos are intended to work alongside accompanying educational resources that support the development of critical thinking among these young people, and help to further build resilience. These educational resources are there for capacity-building among teachers, educators and youth workers who are trying to teach their pupils about violent extremism, its various harms / effects, as well as further develop their resilience to it. They encourage the creation of ‘safe spaces’ for open and frank dialogue to take place, away from judgement or risk of reporting to the police what may have been mentioned within these spaces – one of the statutory obligations / duties of the Prevent strategy in the UK.
(c) To apply the lessons learned in the UK, as well as disseminate the materials which were primarily aimed at UK audiences, to countries such as Hungary, Canada (including French-speaking Canada) and Germany.
Specifically:
“Prior to the launch of the project ISD defined a series of objectives that the online campaign hoped to achieve:
1. A minimum of 10% of views of, or interactions with, the project content stem from the target audiences.
2. Video content is widely shared and consumed across social media.
3. Coverage in offline media is positive and helps to amplify the counter-narratives embodied in the original assets.
4. Sufficient data is collected to enable solid conclusions to be made around the effectiveness of platforms, tactics and spending in reaching the intended target audience(s), and to allow for analysis of engagement and impact.”

There is a series of mechanisms that allow the project to remain sustainable after its completion:
(a) The project’s website remains online, with all the accompanying toolkits, resources, videos and guidance
(b) The videos have been shared and uploaded onto social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. They therefore remain accessible
(c) The trainings, once delivered, enable permanent capacity-development among teachers and educators
(d) The education, once received, enables and develops resilience among young people.

The project – centring around video-stories and interviews, as well as being a resource hub – has transferable qualities. It can be reapplied to national contexts, depending on the violent extremism and violent extremist incidents most relevant to that context.
The caveat is of course that the budget and labour-hours must be similar in supply to that of this project, as the quality of videos, the capacity of the partnership, and the scale of the funding bodies are fairly significant.

Extreme Dialogue includes an evaluation programme for its training and resource provision in schools. The process of evaluation rests upon feedback forms that teachers and students can fill in before and after an ED session. They then analyse the information both quantitatively and qualitatively to measure impact, as well as record any issues or obstacles to the effective impact of the session.
They have a further evaluation method aimed at practitioners that use the Extreme Dialogue resources: an hour-long phone interview to assess impact and issues.
A pilot version of the training was implemented in Calgary, Canada, in 2016 in order to measure its impact and effects, before being implemented elsewhere.
Furthermore, the SecDev Foundation – a think-tank, and research institute in Canada – performed a social media impact analysis at the conclusion of the project to measure its online effectiveness and reach.

Extreme Dialogue:
? Institute for Strategic Dialogue
? DuckRabbit
? Tim Parry-Jonathan Ball Foundation for Peace
Extreme Dialogue Europe:
? Cultures Interactive (Germany)
? Political Capital (Hungary)
Extreme Dialogue in Canada:
? [The SecDev Foundation]

Project Funders:
? Public Safety Canada
? European Commission’s Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union (ISEC)

"Evaluation - Extreme Dialogue". 2017. Extreme Dialogue. http://extremedialogue.org/evaluation/.
"Extreme Dialogue". 2017. PVE A Research Portal. https://preventviolentextremism.info/other_resources/extreme-dialogue.
"Extreme Dialogue - ISD". 2017. ISD. https://www.isdglobal.org/programmes/education/extreme-dialogue/.
"Extreme Dialogue". 2017. Migration And Home Affairs - European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/node/11683_en.

https://www.isdglobal.org/programmes/education/extreme-dialogue/
https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/node/11683_en
http://extremedialogue.org/evaluation/
https://preventviolentextremism.info/other_resources/extreme-dialogue
https://preventviolentextremism.info/extreme-dialogue-social-media-target-audience-analysis-and-impact-assessments-support-countering
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/02/17/fighting-fire-with-fire-_n_6699934.html

So long as Violent Extremism, and in particular the kinds of violent extremism shown in the campaign – Islamist and Right-Wing violent extremism – remains an issue in the European context, the campaign will remain relevant. The project’s videos and tools are still being implemented in schools, elements of the Prevent Strategy places on teachers and educators a Duty to show educational videos that may include those made by the ED project, along with others. All the objectives of the project can therefore be said to still be valid.
Considering the project’s activities were directly related to its stated objectives, and the impact measured along consistent criteria, the project’s activities could be said to be significantly relevant to its overall goals. Furthermore, the effects and impacts of the project remain consistent with its goals – the use of, and sharing of, materials provided by teachers, young people and practitioners.

Resilience-building is a hard objective-criterion to measure. It could be said to be an intangible quality developed in young people and communities. Having said that, the evaluation report conducted post-implementation by the SecDev foundation states:
“The bounces rates and user behaviour statistics achieved by the website suggests that it is highly effective at hooking users and maintaining their interest or curiosity, with the majority of users visiting the majority of pages.”
Furthermore, even though the primary audience targeted (young people) scored much lower on the website visits, the analysis suggests that the secondary target audience was effectively reached:
“The fact that 91% of users were 25 years of age or older suggest the website was most effective for reaching the halo audience of teachers and parents (as well as others such as journalists, education and CVE practitioners).”
Finally, the evaluation states:
“Overall, the findings suggest that the website was effectively designed to promote the project, encourage user engagement and appear readily in search results.”

Facebook Advertising
“Facebook ads were served over 504,000 times to 362,500 unique users during the paid advertising period, resulting in a disappointing 1835 clicks”.
Clicks on ads resulted in 923 actions (likes, shares and comments) from 916 unique users, at an average cost of £1.19 per action.
YouTube Advertising
Paid advertising produced a total of 39 subscribers, 24 shares and 12 likes. These represented 53% of total subscriptions, 44% of shares and 23% of likes.
YouTube generated an impressively large number of impressions and views for a counternarrative campaign.
However, “When advertising on YouTube it is typically both more expensive and less effective to target broader, less-specific audiences.”
It can therefore be said that overall, the campaign’s cost-efficiency was rather low – seeing as its reach was limited, and its cost (especially in its Facebook promotion) was proportionately unfavourable.
However, the objectives of the project were at least partially met, and the number of YouTube views suggests reasonable success in disseminating the videos to the target audiences – especially adults and educators.

The SecDev Foundation performed a post-implementation evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. The objectives, as mentioned were stated as:
“1. A minimum of 10% of views of, or interactions with, the project content stem from the target audiences.
2. Video content is widely shared and consumed across social media.
3. Coverage in offline media is positive and helps to amplify the counter-narratives embodied in the original assets.
4. Sufficient data is collected to enable solid conclusions to be made around the effectiveness of platforms, tactics and spending in reaching the intended target audience(s), and to allow for analysis of engagement and impact.”
The analysis was quoted as follows:
User Demographics
“• From the available data the site was most popular among 25-34 year olds (27%), but attracted a range of different aged users.
• The significant 35-64 cohort (51%) should contain a significant proportion of parents.
• The smaller number of 18-24 year olds (9%), the lowest proportion of any age group, is somewhat disappointing.”
Findings
“By attracting visitors from over 95 countries worldwide the website achieved significant global reach and exposure for the project. However, the website’s most engaged users were Canadian.”
“Facebook was more effective for targeting older users, with ads targeted at parents outperforming those aimed at youth.”
One Alan Fraser, Assistant Head Teacher at Cranford Community College reviewed the project:
‘Extreme Dialogue’ is an excellent programme which enables schools to develop the critical thinking skills essential for young people today. The high-quality resources help teachers to engage in useful and constructive dialogue with students even in a sphere where emotions, opinions and knowledge can be varied.

There is a series of mechanisms that allow the project to remain sustainable after its completion:
(a) The project’s website remains online, with all the accompanying toolkits, resources, videos and guidance
(b) The videos have been shared and uploaded onto social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They therefore remain accessible
(c) The trainings, once delivered, enable permanent capacity-development among teachers and educators
(d) The education, once received, enables and develops resilience among young people.
Whether the benefits of the project have continued after financial support was withdrawn remains unknown. No follow up evaluation has taken place since the one released by SecDev.

The fact that a variety of stakeholders were involved, both in the design and implementation of the project (NGOs, educators, students and the EU/Public Safety Canada), and the evaluation of it post-implementation (Students, Teachers, Practitioners, SecDev) means that the project was on the whole inclusive.
Furthermore, the use of former extremists and victims of extremism as ‘authentic voices’ means that useful and effective platforms were given in the design of the content as well.
However, the project doesn’t include other useful stakeholders – for example law enforcement – although it could be said that the use of their involvement would be limited.