VOX-Pol contributed to this week’s [Y] Factor Conference, a Youth Conference organised by the trainees of the European Committee of the Regions in collaboration with CoR services at the end of their traineeship period.
The main idea behind [Y] Factor is to tackle the topics and issues that concern young people by bringing together local politicians, young people, practitioners, the private sector, representatives of regions, cities, and citizens for an interactive debate.
This year’s conference, which took place in Brussels on Monday, 22 June, focused on how to prevent and counter youth radicalisation through innovative local and technological solutions.
VOX-Pol Programme Manager, Lisa McInerney, gave a presentation at [Y] Factor on the use of the Internet by violent political extremists and radical groups, and outlined some of the challenges relating to the development of appropriate responses to Internet content aimed at mobilising youth.
Part of Lisa’s presentation included providing participants with an overview of VOX-Pol’s research on violent online political extremism.
Other members of the panel included Ali Fisher, Principle Data Scientist, VORTEX, University of Vienna; Merel Molenkamp, Adviser at RadarAdvies and RAN@; and Katrien Hoogewijs, Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs Manager at IBM.