A User Driven Strategy to Recover the Web

A User Driven Strategy to Recover the Web is an Open strategy under development at the Institute of European Affairs (now Institute of International & European Affairs), which makes recommendations on how governments can hinder [...] recruitment on the Internet.

Timeline

The strategy was initially presented in a 166 page report, published in book form, published in March 2007. This report was officially launched in June 2007 by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones. On 6 November the European Commission published its impact assessment on web censorship, which recognised the arguments against hybrid URL filtering outlined in the User Driven Strategy report. On 16 November 2007 the strategy was presented to the Member States of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in a keynote speech 1 to an experts workshop.

Brief Description

The strategy argues against censorship of the Internet, and recommends an alternative strategy in which Governments put the end users of the Internet in the forefront as The Primary actors who can challenge, refute and rebut violent radical material on the Internet. The argument rests on the assumption that since the Internet is impractical to censor, and since the trend of online communications is increasingly horizontal user-to-user communications, the end-user is the only actor who can challenge violent radicalization material at the very point of dissemination in chatrooms and on webforums. The report has a distinctly European character, but might nonetheless be applied to Internet use elsewhere. The full title of the report is Countering Islamist Militant Radicalization on the Internet: A User Driven Strategy to Recover the Web (May 2007, 166 pp, hardback, ISBN: 1-874-109-86-9). link
It was written by Johnny Ryan, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of European Affairs.

The User Driven Strategy

Violent radicalisation on the Internet is at the nexus of two key trends: the democratisation of communications driven by user generated content on the Internet; and the democratisation of strategic violence driven by mass-casualty non-state [...]. The Institute of European Affairs examined how Europe could best capitalise on the first trend to counter the second.
In August 2006, the European Commissioner for Justice & Home Affairs, Franco Frattini, raised the prospect of censoring the Internet in an effort to PReVENT further 'home grown' [...].
The Institute of European Affairs examined the technical, legal and commercial implications of censorship and concluded that such a course would be impractical and largely irrelevant.
However, if, as chapter two of the report suggests link, censorship of the Internet is not possible, how should Europe respond to online violent radicalisation? The Institute's report presents a set of strategic principles that could inform a European policy response. The answer lies in the "user driven" Internet revolution. By equipping Internet users to respond, debate, or delete messages calling for violence, militant Islamist radicalisation can be challenged at the very point where it is disseminated in chat rooms, on web forums, and through websites on the Internet. The key themes and vulnerabilities in the militant call to violence should be widely disseminated by "Enabling Stakeholders" such as schools, religious communities, and community groups.

The role of cultural intelligence

Action against radicalisation and recruitment of young European citizens, on the Internet or elsewhere, requires investment in gathering and disseminating “cultural intelligence” to develop a thorough and accessible understanding of the call to violence that attracts militant Islamist recruits and supporter. This is essentially a task for the European Commission and / or Member States to promote. The Commission has already begun to move in this direction, establishing an experts group on violent radicalisation in April 2006, and announcing funding for related projects in January 2007. The Check the Web initiative established by the German Presidency will also facilitate cooperation between Member States in gathering information about [...] content on the Internet. A cultural intelligence, gathered under the aegis of Member States or the European Commission, enables analysis of the key pillars of militant Islamist rhetoric, identification of points of discord, and strategies for their rebuttal, which can then be disseminated to individual Internet users via Enabling Stakeholders. Enabling Stakeholders include educators, spiritual and political leaders, media professionals, information technology administrators in corporations, web forum operators, community workers, employers, etc. Internet users, once empowered with cultural intelligence, can better choose whether and how to rebut, challenge, delete etc. the messages that they receive over the Internet.

The 4 Ps: Precedent, Perseverance, Piety, Persecution

Because content on the Internet is subject to constant change and updating, which quickly renders analysis of individual postings and messages redundant, the report focused on the central themes of militant discussion, refining them into 4 P-words (Precedent, Perseverance, Piety, Persecution) that provide a culturally transferable formula through which discussion on the Internet can be better understood. These central themes include the narrative of Western persecution of Islam, the use of heroes and references to earlier conflicts, and the Salafist idea of a utopian past under the “rightly guided Caliphs”. The 4Ps presented in the report, and in other of the author's work, provide a matrix to enable better understanding of violent radical material on the Internet. This aspect of the report was a development of the author's previous research at Cambridge University.

Four strategic recommendations

The report concludes that

The Internet cannot be censored, but it can be exploited. .... This chapter examines elements of a strategy to promote the articulation of moderate opinions, rebuttals and refutations to violent radicalisation on the Internet by Internet users themselves. There are three primary actors in this strategy: i) the European Commission and Member States, ii) what this report refers to as “Enabling Stakeholders, and iii) individual end users of the Internet of all ages throughout the EU. The process, explained in more detail below, would operate thus: First, the European Commission and Member States should promote the gathering and dissemination of cultural intelligence. Second, an “Enabling Stakeholder”, such as a primary school, should disseminate cultural intelligence to Internet users, which in this case would be school students. The focus of this strategy is the empowerment of individuals, using cultural intelligence to enable them to refute, rebut, or delete violent radicalisation material encountered in different forms on the Internet. By empowering the end user who visits web forums and chat rooms, this strategy counters violent radicalisation at the very point of dissemination on the Internet. In addition, by focussing on the role of the individual user, this strategy avoids the prospect of a spiralling rhetorical war between national governments and extremist groups.

The report argues that the following four principles should inform European responses:

  1. Censorship is impractical and should not be pursued. The Internet should be used to challenge violent radicalisation.
  2. A strategy to counter violent radicalisation on the Internet should be “user driven”. The individuals using the Internet are in a better position than Government to challenge violent radicalisation on websites, in chat rooms and on web forums.
  3. Better “cultural intelligence”, such as awareness of history and religion, will enable and convince users to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the militants’ call to violence.
  4. Enabling Stakeholders (schools, religious and community organisations, and other relevant actors) can disseminate cultural intelligence to individual Internet users of all ages.