This document outlines a project to develop tools to prevent and counter radicalization through participatory policies. It discusses analyzing data from social media and open datasets to understand radicalization trends and identify risks. The goals are to reduce domestic radicalization, promote security, and encourage citizen engagement with authorities. Functional requirements include entity extraction, sentiment analysis, and risk predictions to generate insights for policymakers. Visualization dashboards will display analyzed data and trends to support policy evaluation and development.

1. policycloud.eu 1
02/07/2020
Armend Duzha, Maggioli
Participatory policies
to prevent and counter
radicalization
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No 870675.

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Plan for the discussion
General overview on radicalization
Radicalization phenomena
Main actors and stakeholders involved
User Requirements
Analytics tools
Visualization tools
Data Requirements
Social Media
Open Datasets
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What is radicalization?
a process through which an individual (or group of individuals) adopts an
increasingly extremist set of beliefs and aspirations. This may include, but is not
defined by, the willingness to condone, support, facilitate or use violence to
further political, ideological, religious or other goals.
UN Office of Counter Terrorism
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Specific domains to tackle
prisons and judiciary system
migration hotspots and asylum centers
schools
religious communities
cities (peri-urban contexts)
Internet and media
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Main actors involved
Policy makers at any level
Local (e.g. municipalities, social services)
Regional (e.g. regions)
National (e.g. Ministries)
European (e.g. DG HOME, RAN, Europol)
International (e.g. UNOCT, Interpol)
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Other important stakeholders
LEAs (police officers,…)
Schools (school principal, teachers,…)
NGOs (social workers,…)
EU Associations/initiatives (EFUS, EUCPN, EUNWA, …)
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Main Goals
Reduce occurrence of domestic radicalisation by early identifying warning
signals and risks from social media and other data sources
Promote secure access to public spaces for more people, enriching their
perception of security and safety.
Encourage citizen engagement and trust in the perceived legitimacy of public
authorities (municipalities, regions, LEAs)
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Strategic Objectives
02/07/2020
Use of heterogeneous data sources to understand hidden patterns and new trends
Extract, analyse and classify retrieved information based on defined ontologies to
generate useful insights about radicalization efforts and incidents
Create measurable KPIs and design new policies/update existing ones to elaborate
suitable means and countermeasures to prevent youth radicalization, as well as to
contrast the spreading of extremism among those detained;
Evaluate the impact of the (new) implemented policies compared the old ones
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Application Scenarios
02/07/2020
Visualization
heatmap about the frequency of occurrence of incidents
targeting vulnerable groups (e.g. children, minor) in the
geographic proximity of a town/region
New Entity detection
main actors (e.g. individuals and organized groups) that
contribute to the creation of communication strategies
directed to spread, both online and offline, an alternative
narrative and counter-narrative
uc Scenario2. Use Cases
Policy Maker
Categorization
Dashboard
Trendings
BrandAnalysis
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Requirement Analysis
02/07/2020
Functional requirements
Opinion Analysis
Sentiment Analysis
Hierarchical Text Mining
Data requirements
Global Terrorism Database
Information from social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit
RSS & Blog web pages
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Section Description
ID REQ-PPR-12
Title Data Analysis in near real-time
Level of detail Stakeholder
Type PERF
Description Information collected from different dataset should be analysed every
predefined time
Additional
Information
N/A
Actor N/A
Priority MAN
Reference
Use Case
SCE-PPR-03, SCE-PPR-05
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Section Description
ID REQ-PPR-13
Title Visualization
Level of detail Stakeholder
Type L&F
Description Dashboard should show more relevant information at a glance
Additional
Information
N/A
Actor End User, Policy Maker
Priority DES
Reference
Use Case
SCE-PPR-06, SCE-PPR-07
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20/12/19
Section Description
ID REQ-PPR-14
Title Risk Prediction
Level of detail Stakeholder
Type L&F
Description Dashboard should show predictions on potential risks / threats and
their location
Additional
Information
N/A
Actor End User, Policy Maker
Priority DES
Reference
Use Case
SCE-PPR-06, SCE-PPR-07
Participatory Policies against Radicalization

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Section Description
ID REQ-PPR-15
Title Extraction of entities
Level of detail Stakeholder
Type FUNC
Description More relevant entities (extremist groups and/or individuals,
location) should be extracted from different sources
Additional
Information
N/A
Actor N/A
Priority MAN
Reference
Use Case
SCE-PPR-05, SCE-PPR-06, SCE-PPR-07
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@PolicyCloudEU
PolicyCloud EU
www.policycloud.eu
PolicyCloud has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870675.
Armend Duzha (armend.duzha@maggioli.it)