RAN LOCAL - Dealing with the local impact of online extremist activities - 16-17 June 2022, Barcelona, Spain

We are looking for participants who are interested in joining the upcoming RAN LOCAL working group meeting on ‘How to deal with the local impact of online extremist activities’.

Background and aim of the meeting

Online extremist content and activities are not stand-alone communications. They have an impact on the people reading and interacting with them, both online and offline. It is therefore also a matter for local authorities and practitioners who engage with these people in a local context. In previous RAN meetings, local P/CVE coordinators have indicated that they struggle with several aspects of online extremist activities.

One of these aspects concerns the legal limits of local authorities in tracking or engaging online, as legal boundaries are not always clear and sometimes even lacking. Additionally, online content and activities can have a local target but can be placed from anywhere, which is not always traceable.

This  can make prosecution by local authorities challenging or even impossible when it’s out of their jurisdiction. Another challenge concerns the development or adaptation of local professionals’ skills and knowledge to operate in a rapidly changing online landscape.

During this meeting, participants will collaboratively work on several cases and discuss and share potential ways of dealing with the challenges they are facing at the local level related to online extremist content and activities. The outcomes will be captured in a guide for local authorities on how to deal with the local impact of online extremist activities.

Call for participants

For this meeting we are looking for local P/CVE coordinators facing challenges in dealing with the impact of online extremist activities and first-line practitioners who are experienced in incorporating online activities into their daily practice (either online or offline). Participants are asked to put their experiences and lessons learned into finding solutions for the cases presented at the meeting. Please note that this meeting will be held in English and will take place on location (Barcelona, tbc).

If you are interested in participating in this meeting, please answer the questions in this form no later than 9 May. 

We will invite participants and draft the programme based on the answers to these questions. Please keep in mind that we only have a limited number of spots available for this meeting, so participation is not guaranteed.  If you are invited to participate, your travel and accommodation will be arranged for you.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact Malaz Shahhoud or Lieke Wouterse