Undergraduate marketing students recently launched a global education and advocacy campaign to mobilize and encourage networks of youth to counter the social media presence and effectiveness of violent extremists' online messaging.
The campaign is a part of the Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism initiative. UNM is one of 45 schools worldwide participating in the program.
Sponsored by the U.S. State Department and facilitated by EdVenture Partners with other interagency governmental support, the program tasks student teams to create digital media content through tools that empower youth networks to counter the social media presence and effectiveness of violent extremists’ online messaging, the campaign organizers said.
“As an undergraduate marketing student in the Anderson School of Management promotion management class, my class and I have formed a student-run agency to develop and implement the KNOW Extremism Campaign using a $2,000 budget,” said Bryan Mirabal, a senior business administration major.
The project uses a comprehensive digital media approach to counter negative online activity, including a website, online ads, social media and a digital advocacy hub, he said.
“These tools and resources were designed to educate millennials about violent extremism and to mobilize them to speak out against it,” he said.
UNM was invited to participate in the P2P: Challenging Extremism initiative by EdVenture Partners, a company that connects private sector and government clients with academic institutions, Mirabal said.
“Despite our initial reluctance to become involved in countering violent extremism due to the nature of the subject, the class as a whole has embraced the project with high hopes that the KNOW Extremism Campaign will empower our peers to speak out on social media about this important issue,” he said.
He said that the organizers of the project get inspiration from knowing that their work could have a meaningful impact on a global scale.
“Our research team discovered that an alarming number of respondents have been exposed to a violent extremist message on social media, which helped us realize that the issue reaches much closer to home than you’d expect,” he said.
“With over 2 billion social media users worldwide and an estimated 46,000 violent extremist accounts, we know that there’s more of us than them and can use our voices online to speak out.”
He said that most people tend to focus on the unrest in the Middle East, but violent extremism occurs throughout the world.
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“From New Mexican to global politics, we believe that this is an issue that affects everyone and that the first step is to fully understand what violent extremism actually is,” he said.
He said that social media is a global phenomenon that connects people from all areas of the world, and the organizers of the campaign believe that the KNOW Extremism Campaign provides young people with fundamental resources needed to join the conversation and speak out.
He said that a full understanding of violent extremism is paramount due to the potentially controversial subject matter.
“What it is, how it works and who participates are all key aspects of extremism that must be understood before extremist ideology and narratives can be opposed on a global scale,” Mirabal said.
He said the campaign seeks to empower the very people ISIL and other violent extremist groups are trying to recruit – youth – with information to answer these questions, he said.
The centerpiece of the campaign is “In the Know," a digital hub that allows participants to engage in grassroots efforts to advocate against violent extremism by sharing curated content via their own social media channels, Mirabal said.
“The hub is powered by SwellStarter, an easy-to-use software platform developed by McKee Wallwork + Co. that helps brands and organizations share relevant, customized, curated content via the social communities of their natural allies,” he said.
The P2P: Challenging Extremism program is leading towards an international competition on Jan. 14, 2016, according to a press release issued by the organizers.
The top three participating schools will be invited to Washington, D.C. to present their research, plan and results to senior government officials and industry leaders at the U.S. Department of State to determine the P2P: Challenging Extremism winner. The top team will receive a scholarship prize of $5,000, followed by smaller prizes for the second- and third-place winners, according to the statement.
However, Lauren Wade, a senior business administration major and creative director of the campaign, said that this campaign is more than a competition for them.
“What we are developing is a system that concentrates on a topic in our purview more frequently,” Wade said. “We are working to spur conversation about something that affects all of our global communities, and that matters to myself and the rest of the team.”
She said that through their social media campaign and website strategy they are collecting information that properly illustrates the breath of violent extremism while also providing opportunities to get involved in speaking out about it.
“The KNOW Extremism Campaign is reaching toward individuals like myself who see violent extremism's prevalence in our world growing, yet lack the knowledge and willingness to speak out,” Wade said. “With the resources we are providing…I do believe we can have an impact.”
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
