Social workers ‘should engage online’

SOCIAL WORKERS should use Facebook and Twitter to engage with people sharing extreme and violent material online, according to an expert on the far right and terrorism.

Vidhya Ramalingam said they should have the same kind of conversations on social media that a youth worker might have had with a gang on the streets.

Ms Ramalingam, who founded Moonshot CVE to tackle extremism and violence, said new technology should be harnessed to identify people who could be at risk of committing terrorist acts in the UK or travelling overseas.

This week the Government published its updated “Contest” anti-terror strategy, which will see MI5 share intelligence with bodies outside the security community. In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in Britain, including the murder of MP Jo Cox, the Westminster attacks, the Manchester bombing and the murder of Lee Rigby.

Ms Ramalingam, who was speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, said it was often much easier to spot radicalism online than within the community.

“Sometimes the signs are not very obvious in the world around us. We live in a real world where you can sit and touch the person next to you, but we also have an online life,” she said. “Unless they tattoo a swastika to their forehead or set up a soapbox in the street and tell us they believe in these things, it might be very difficult for us to see that in their daily lives.

“But online they could be living a completely different life. They could be standing on that soapbox posting videos glorifying Hitler. I believe online is not just a place where awful things happen, but it is also a place where we can do real good.”