Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism and Polarisation

Project Information

BRaVE

Grant agreement ID: 822189

DOI

10.3030/822189

Project closed

EC signature date 7 November 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 31 December 2021

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 1 483 750,00

EU contribution

€ 1 483 750,00

Coordinated by

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BRaVE (Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism and Polarisation)

Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2021-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Building Resilience against Violent Extremism and Polarisation (BRaVE) Project brings together researchers and stakeholders with a view to understanding which factors drive polarisation and violent extremism in European societies, and identifying strategies in response that build resilient communities. The project explores what European countries can learn from the studies, policies and programmes implemented so far to counter violent extremism and polarisation, as well as what tools can be developed to support practitioners, policymakers and stakeholders across Europe in building resilient communities. The BRaVE project creates an analytical framework that helps understand processes of violent extremism and polarisation both towards the Far Right and towards religiously attributed radicalisation. It creates relevant policy indicators on polarisation/resilience to assess trends on national and European-wide levels. It produces interfaith and intercultural education tools, and highlights good practices or preventing polarisation and building resilience through arts and sports.

The BRaVE project offers an analytical framework for understanding the interaction between different factors that lead to polarised ideologies and societal fragmentation, as well as what current approaches offer good practice response, paying special attention to historical and cultural factors, socio-economic inequalities and the role of media and social media.

Why it is important for society

Approaches to issues such as extremism and polarisation have, to date, been largely focussed on the local or national level in their scope and delivery, remaining uncoordinated on the European-wide scale. However, the international scope of the threat has led to an increasing awareness of the need to share perspectives and build cross-national partnerships. By bringing together different studies into the processes behind violent extremism and polarisation, as well as sharing differing tactics towards resilience-building, stakeholders, practitioners and policy-makers can refine approaches to combat key issues facing European societies. The work of tackling polarisation and extreme ideologies has a crucial anticipatory thrust. The main focus of prevention policies is empowering of the communities from which violent extremists might emerge and which might, if neglected, be deemed potentially supportive of them.

Objectives of the BRaVE Project

i. Update the knowledge on polarisation, violent extremism and resilience through mapping relevant literature, policies and practices.
ii.To design new tools for policy-making: The project creates a set of Polarisation Indicators, so we can understand how to measure processes of polarisation and extremism
iii.To design new tools for education using Massive Open Online Courses and stakeholder workshops.
iv.To build new networks and opportunities bringing together existing grassroots projects involved in community arts and sports.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Update the knowledge on polarisation, violent extremism and resilience

The BRaVE Concept Paper develops a working definition of the three, often contested, terms of polarisation, violent extremism and resilience: Polarisation refers to the process through which complex social relations come to be represented and perceived in Manichean ‘black and white’ terms; ‘Violent extremism’ is defined as the use of violent acts, or threat thereof, by irregular actors in the pursuit of political aims to erode democratic processes and pluralistic values; Resilience is about the ability of people to face and respond to adversity, and the capacity to draw on various sources of strength (individual or social) to adapt and cope with challenges.

The BRaVE project offers an online database and interactive map of nearly 700 projects, policies, institutions and studies from 10 European countries: BE, DK, FR, DE, GR, HU, IT, NL, PL and the UK see http://brave-h2020.eu/database .
A Special Issue on Resilience and Resistance in Illiberal Regimes at the peer refereed journal Intersections – East European Journal of Society and Politics https://intersections.tk.mta.hu/index.php/intersections/index.
A Special Issue on Exploring Societal Resilience to Online Polarisation and Extremism will appear in May 2022 in the online peer refereed journal First Monday: https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/index

To design new tools for policy-making

The BRaVE Toolkit http://brave-h2020.eu/toolkit consists of two sets of indicators: indicators of polarisation and indicators of resilience. Polarisation indicators are mirrored by a set of corresponding Moderation indicators Likewise, Resilience indicators are mirrored by a set of corresponding non-resilience indicators. The toolkit is designed for a wide range of users: researchers, policy makers, NGOs.

A Policy Brief entitled: Preventing Violent Extremism: A Delicate Balance which brings together policies and practices from 9 European countries, identifies good practices, practices that do not work and why, and makes recommendations to both national and European policy makers.

New tools for education

A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to explore interfaith responses to violent extremism and polarisation: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/interfaith-dialogue The course is open access, free of charge and has had over 2,500 participants during its first four runs.
Five educational outreach online webinars and workshops (instead of the initially planned one) in Feb, May, June and October 2021 –in partnership with the eTwinning educational Platform involving middle and high school teachers in different European countries
Five online training workshops (the BRaVE Academy) engaging with the BRaVE Fair projects (all those who applied to the competition) as well as other civil society actors discussing issues of advocacy, gender and at risk communities, online work, sports and the arts in building resilience: http://brave-h2020.eu/braveFair

Net networks and opportunities

The BRaVE platform showcases the online database, the Polarisation Indicators Toolkit, information on publications and workshops: http://brave-h2020.eu/
A blogging space entitled ‘Global Extremes’ which has had near 100,000 users with over 130,000 views by 31 December 2021, each user spending more than 3 minutes on the platform.Our Twitter account has more than 1,100 followers and has been particularly active showcasing our project events and results https://twitter.com/BraveProjectEU

Concluding remarks on exploitation and dissemination

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to less terrorism events but more online polarisation and extremism particularly among Far Right groups. Several new issues have come to the fore: the mainstreaming of misinformation and conspiracy theories; new articulations of racism and anti-migrant sentiment; and the exacerbation of financial and social inequalities. The BRaVE project has managed to capture some of these challenges through its additional online educational tools (particularly with secondary education teachers across Europe), through its online training and networking activities in spring and fall 2021 with civil society actors, and with its publications – the two Special Issues that addressed the challenges of polarisation in illiberal regimes and the factors and strategies of resilience to extremism in online settings.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

n/a

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