PRECOBIAS is a user-centred counter-narrative campaign project that centres around the mental processes and cognitive biases at stake when youngsters, especially the ones either vulnerable to radicalisation or already radicalized, are faced with extremist/terrorist discourses on social media. The project aims to counter radicalisation in the long term by enhancing digital resilience and critical thinking of the target audience. PRECOBIAS helps them get to know themselves
better by revealing the mental processes and cognitive biases that underlie their interpretations and analyses. PRECOBIAS aims to bring about behaviour change, dissuading target youngsters from promoting extremist content online.
To reach these objectives, PRECOBIAS targets:
- vulnerable and radicalized youngsters directly through a social media campaign, comprising a test to increase selfawareness, videos and an Instagram contest;
- the social workers and teachers who are in charge of the target youngsters by providing them a MOOC about cognitive biases and radicalisation, together with 2 specific toolkits with ready-to-use activities;
- civil-society organizations across the EU with an international one-day training programme that will afford them to train professionals involved with counter extremism at local level, to increase PRECOBIAS impact.
The PRECOBIAS campaign will be based on tangible evidence about cognitive biases, radicalisation and social media and is the result of preliminary multidisciplinary scientific research, together with grass-roots professional experiences of civil society organizations, teachers and social workers alike. PRECOBIAS will be performed in 8 EU languages, including the 6 most common mother tongues (EN, DE, ES, FR, IT, PL) as well as 2 minor EU languages (SK, HU).