RAN CSEP BRIEFING: COUNTER@CT

The Counteract project aims to disseminate an alternative narrative to prevent young migrants and refugees (16-25 years old) in Portugal from adhering to polarised and extremist online narratives. The campaign is called #thisismystory and consists of four video narratives.

Each narrative is told by people who are representative of the target audience. The narratives feature refugees and migrants describing their reason to flee or emigrate. The aim of these personal stories is to create an alternative narrative to messages depicting refugees and migrants in a negative way. Additionally, it aims to create understanding and compassion through such narratives. The project collaborated closely with government agencies, marketing specialist and civil society.

Through online engagements, the projects perception of the result was confirmed in several comments where people stated they felt the same or had similar experiences good and bad in their own integration process in Portugal. We can then comfortably say that we had both hate speech, as much as we could expect unfortunately, but also a large number of positive interactions and comments. This is testimony of positive perceptions of young people (including the project’s main target group) but also Portuguese society as a whole.

This paper follows a briefing structure that summarises the campaign, the main achievements of the project, the lessons learned on online campaigning in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE), and links to some of the campaign messages