Social media extremism demands action: experts
‘Should be a government responsibility’
• Governments need to do more to counter the radical extremist messages on social media aimed at convincing young people to commit violent acts, an international conference on countering extremism and terrorism heard Thursday.
The conference, presented by the Queen’s University Centre for International and Defence Policy, brought together approximately 50 academics, government, security and law- enforcement officials from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
With extremist messages finding root in a younger audience, government agencies are being urged to embrace ways to respond to the messages of violence that extremist groups are putting out on social media.
“I believe, personally, that alternative discourses or counter- discourses on the Internet should be a government responsibility,” said Ghayda Hassan, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Quebec at Montreal.
“There should be a concerted action f r om t he ground level to the government level. Just individuals will no longer be able to handle the massive use of social media by extremist groups.”
Extremist messages on social media can find a fertile audience among young people, and research in Australia has shown the average age of those charged with terrorism-related crimes has been getting younger, said Shandon Harris- Hogan of the Australian National University.
Dealing with younger extremists, many of whom are teenagers, creates another layer of complexity for agencies tasked with rehabilitating them, Harris- Hogan added.
In many western countries, efforts to counter radical extremism take three forms: general programs that address whole communities, t argeted programs for people identified as vulnerable to extremist messages and rehabilitation programs.
Funding of the different programs can be influenced by political considerations, said Lorne Dawson, a professor in the departments of sociology and legal studies and religious studies at the University of Waterloo.
In Canada, while the previous federal Conservative government’s emphasis was on a law enforcement response, the Liberal government is in the early phases of establishing a new strategy to counter extremism, an effort Dawson said will need to tap into research that has already been done.
“There are mountains that we don’t understand about how people get radicalized,” Dawson said. “If we don’t know how they get in, how can we design programs to get them out?”
Hassan said one of the aspects of extremist messaging ignored until now is its growth among women.
“Extremist movements are becoming very good in using that discourse as a feminist gesture, as a power gesture,” said Hassan, who explained that young women who become radicalized do so at a younger age and become more extreme than young men.
“Let’s get out of the vict i mization paradigm of women. They are not just victims of extremist movements, they are major actors in extremist movements, only they are hidden actors and what is hidden is usually more effective.”