The Co-Design of a Counter-Narrative Social Campaign: Second Generation Youths Against Radicalization

Abstract

This paper deals with the OLTRE project (ISF - DG Migration and Home Affairs, EU) funded for preventing the radicalization of the second-generation of migrants in Italy. This essay aims to study the production of an online communication campaign co-designed by second-generation youths. The four Universities engaged in the project, in order to collect the issues for the campaign made an in-depth sociological research and an interdisciplinary social network analysis. We will present the results of the non-standard field research. Starting from the different dimensions of the risk of radicalization proposed by the kaleidoscopic overview of risk factors (Sieckelinck and Gielen 2018: 5; Ranstorp 2016), we created a topic guide for the in-depth qualitative interviews, then we collected 42 interviews of second generation youths (18-30 years) in 7 Italian towns. Furthermore, we studied the theater performances taped during the laboratories made by second generation youths collecting narratives, representations, stories and emotions about their representation of the radicalization risk and protection factors. This corpus was used for the social communication campaign to prevent radicalization, engaging the research participants as key players, co-designing the counter-narrative contents (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2015). The paper study also the viral dissemination of the social communication campaign on the social network and the role of the moderators. References Ranstorp, M. The root causes of violent extremism. RAN issue paper, 4 January 2016. Sieckelinck S. and Gielen Amy-Jane, Protective and promotive factors building resilience against violent, RAN issue paper, April 2018. Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Counter Narratives and Alternative Narratives. The role of counter- and alternative narratives in prevention of radicalisation, RAN, 2015.