danielcodes / big_brother

Hackathon project for Angelhack Manhattan 2017

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What is violent extremism?

Wikipedia defines violent extremism as beliefs and actions of people who support or use ideologically motivated violence to achieve radical ideological, religious or political views.

Questions we need to answer

1) How do you get someone who is looking at extremist content to look at alternative narratives?
2) How do you create local role models / heroes that vulnerable young people can look up to and admire?
3) How can you expose and flag extremist content?
4) How can you build networks and strengthen the influence of moderate groups?
5) How can you assess what tech tools are/aren't working in countering extremism?
6) Is there a savvy way to monitor activity on extremist platforms during certain events?
7) How can you convey the dangers of viewing extremist content, and participating in extremist

networks, to vulnerable young people?

Our Approach towards addressing these issues

1. Understanding and defining violent extremism  
2. A day in the life of a "target"  
	A target can be of any gender, age, religion and in any location. In this respect, it becomes essential to understand the lives of dofferent target groups. We have covered a few below:  
		* Children and adolescents: Probably, the most vulnerable group, spends an average of 7.5 hours a day on various entertainment media[1].
3. Identifying apportunities to identify targets  
4. Developing addressal mechanisms for intervention  
5. Creating and pushing content online  
6. Measuring and monitoring performance.    

We try to answer each of these questions above below

1. Pushing Alternative Narratives

2. Creating local role models / heroes

3. Exposing and flagging extremist content

4. Building networks and strengthening moderate groups

5. Assessing tool efficacy

6. Savvy monitoring

7. Conveying dangers to vulnerable young people

Data Prevention Cycle ###### (Thank you Hoa!)

1. Data Collection
2. Intervention
3. Evaluation  

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References

1. A Kaiser Family Foundation Study. Generation M2: media in the lives of 8- to 18-year-olds. http://kff.org/other/report/generation-m2-media-in-the-lives-of-8-to-18-year-olds/(kff.org). Accessed March 29, 2015.