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Steps to implement a local campaign created by young people

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The LOUD project

The LOUD project

Part 4

Steps to implement a local campaign created by young people

A successful local alternative narrative campaign, i.e. one that has reached its target audience, delivers a message that resonates with that audience and results in an improved situation, is above all a wellprepared campaign. The first step is essential: understanding the real situation on the ground in your community. This will allow you to fine-tune your campaign. The second step is to mobilise local actors who are best able to contribute to the campaign and disseminate it in a targeted and effective way. These local actors are also essential in identifying and mobilising the groups of young people who will design the campaign messages through specific training on alternative narrative methodologies. Secondly, as with any communication campaign, your alternative narrative campaign should be carefully prepared and use existing communication knowledge, such as targeting, designing powerful messages for the target audience, and the most appropriate delivery channels. The campaign should also be rigorously evaluated throughout its duration, and especially while it is being broadcast, in order to measure its impact and identify its strengths and weaknesses. This will allow you to adjust your approach during the campaign and decide how to capitalise on it afterwards.

The local audit

The first and most important step is to find out what the situation is in your area and what the local needs are in terms of preventing and combating discrimination. Thus, a local audit of your territory's needs should: give you an initial overview of the discrimination, the profile of victims and their perpetrators

enable you to identify the main problems related to the discrimination faced by victims in your area, in all aspects of their lives enable you to identify existing measures to prevent discrimination: resources (human, financial, infrastructure), successes and failures in social cohesion, integration and interculturality or assimilation. In short, this audit should enable you to identify the shortcomings to be remedied and the priority areas to be worked on. It is important to note that, for Efus and its member cities, working on the prevention of discrimination provides a clearer route for tackling the issues of radicalisation leading to violent extremism.

Agree on the terms

To get a good picture of a situation on the ground, it is obviously essential to be clear about what you are trying to learn. In the field of prevention and the fight against discrimination (in the broadest sense, we will come back to this in a few moments), it is a question of measuring concrete situations in your territory with regard to concepts that are not necessarily precise and clear for everyone. Indeed, what exactly is meant by ‘discrimination’, ‘hate crimes’, ‘hate speech’, ‘discriminatory violence’ or ‘radicalisation leading to violence’? It is important to present these concepts and work on them with the team carrying out the diagnosis, but also subsequently with the young people who will be collaborating in your alternative narrative campaign. In the Annex, you can find a series of definitions that summarise the general consensus, which are also those on which Efus bases its work. Thus, we understand the phenomenon of discriminatory violence in terms of this definition: “An act of discriminatory violence is a violent incident which the victim, a witness or any other person perceives as being motivated by prejudice, intolerance, bias or hate, and which may or may not constitute a criminal offence under the valid penal code.” (Efus, 2017:13)11

11- Efus (2017). Preventing Discriminatory Violence at the Local Level: Practices and Recommendations.

Define the framework of your audit

Once you have clarified these definitions, you need to frame your audit. Determine the geographical area in which you intend to target your survey: for example, a neighbourhood, a few specific streets, or your entire municipality. Finally, you need to identify the audiences you are seeking to protect against discrimination: women, young people, ethnic communities, the elderly, etc.

Set goals and objectives using the SMART method

Goals are general guidelines that define what you want to achieve. They are usually set in the long term and represent global visions such as ‘the security of residents’. Objectives define strategies or implementation steps to achieve the goals. Objectives are specific, measurable and have a defined completion date. They are more specific and define the who, what, when, where and how.

The SMART method is commonly used to define objectives that are achievable, i.e.: Specific (simple, clear and understandable) Measurable (quantifiable and qualified) Acceptable (shared and achievable) Realistic (reasonable) Temporally defined (timeframe, deadline, limited time/cost).

Collect quantitative data...

The audit should enable you to collect quantitative data on the geographical area you have chosen to examine: demographic and social aspects (population density, age, gender and ethnic distribution, residents, employment and unemployment rates, average income, etc.)

geographical and residential conditions (proportion of urban and peri-urban areas, homeowner/renter rates, etc.) police and judicial statistics, incivilities and disorders linked to discrimination (facts observed in schools, transport, companies, etc.) delinquency and incivilities that generate a feeling of insecurity (domestic violence, homophobia, racism, restrictions on access to employment or housing, drug offences, prostitution, etc.) information on the means used in relation to security and discrimination (police action, the judicial system, private security, prevention in transport, the rental sector, public spaces, schools, etc.) information on feelings of insecurity and discrimination (from separate surveys, either prior to or for the audit) information from social networks, especially those with a local dimension relevant to the issue (e.g. sites promoting discrimination or hate) information on the processes of radicalisation, whether religious, political or of any other nature (are there individuals in your community identified as being at risk of radicalisation, or already on file as such?). The partner cities in the LOUD project used different methodologies. As an example, the City of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat used the following tools and information sources: 1. Collection of existing information (secondary data) from surveys conducted by other institutions, available data from statistical sources, city council reports and planning documents.

2. Research in local media and social networks to identify hate speech and/or intolerance related to local dynamics. 3. Design and dissemination of an online consultation with staff of the municipality and a number of public institutions and civil society organisations on the state of discrimination and hate speech. This consultation was the main tool for identifying priorities in the territory. It is intended to become a working tool in several departments and projects of the city.

4. Focus groups with the main project actors in the territory, such as: representatives of social organisations working mainly in the city, teenagers (15–16 years old), and municipal agents working in different fields. The focus groups allow the information gathered in the online consultation to be processed in depth and bring a more qualitative narrative to the study.

... and qualitative data

Qualitative data complements quantitative data and allows us to ‘check the pulse’ of the local population. Thus, this part of the audit will include, for example: local surveys carried out in specific locations and on specific discrimination

Within the framework of the LOUD project, Valenciennes Métropole developed a questionnaire for diagnosing manifestations of discrimination and radicalisation (social, political, religious) in order to compensate the lack of territorialised data. It is intended for professionals in the fields of education, professional integration and social work, mainly working with young people under 30. interviews with elected representatives, associations, educators and religious representatives a working group with residents, especially young people. The City of Rosny-sous-Bois organised two working sessions: one gathered, besides the municipal department for youth, professionals and practitioners from the education sector, social services and youth centres, the other gathered young local residents.

Inventory of activities to prevent discrimination and radicalisation

Finally, the audit should enable you to identify the activities that already exist in your territory in the field of preventing discrimination and radicalisation. It is a question of establishing a state of affairs: legal provisions to combat discrimination and/or radicalisation the institutional environment: who has jurisdiction over what, particularly between the public and non-profit sectors? available surveys and research (institutional sources, universities, associations) on perceived and experienced discrimination (e.g. in access to employment, or the representativeness of different population groups within the police force, etc.) existing prevention strategies that can be a source of inspiration the human and financial resources available to you online and offline training tools tools, particularly online, to detect discrimination, and alert and support victims.

Map the actors to be mobilised

All local authorities work with a network of local partners, including associations and civil society organisations, and will be able to mobilise these actors for their alternative narrative campaigns. Their contribution will be particularly valuable in involving young local residents in the campaign. However, it is also important to determine whether it is possible to work with other organisations/institutions that are present in the territory, that the community is not usually in regular contact with but which could bring real added value in this particular context. This mapping should be carried out at the beginning of the needs identification phase, in order to identify actors and see how far they can be involved in the project. Indeed, these actors can have either a central or

a ‘peripheral’ role – depending on their availability – in the objective of mobilising young people. They can therefore have an awarenessraising role (more remote), a targeted impact, or be credible messengers and influencers (central role). Effective prevention and intervention against racism can only be achieved if all participants act together in close coordination. Prevention is a crosscutting social task that requires good interaction between all the relevant areas, and relies in particular on partnerships between civil society and institutional actors. The City of Düsseldorf already had an institutionalised structure of projects and measures for the prevention of discrimination; within the framework of the LOUD project, local actors have been collaborating actively through the management of the city's Crime Prevention Council (CPC). These actors include the school network, the CPC specialist group ‘Violence Prevention in Schools’, the Youth Welfare Office, the Youth Council of the City Municipal Integration Centre, and other local stakeholders, such as the Jewish community and Muslim associations.

Training young people who will conduct the campaign

As mentioned above, cities wishing to undertake an alternative narrative campaign initiative involving young people, as a measure to prevent discrimination at the local level, need to partner with local organisations, schools, community groups and other actors with experience in working with young people. Even within a local authority, there is a need for cross-sectoral and coordinated work with the different departments that may be involved in the fight against discrimination, e.g. the violence prevention department, the anti-discrimination department for young people and the communication department.

Organising training sessions with young people helps to raise their awareness of the discrimination issues identified in the territory during the audit phase, and to strengthen open-mindedness, tolerance and the capacity of young people to act in favour of a plural and diverse society. The training also teaches them how to develop an alternative narrative campaign in all its stages, from the design stage to evaluation.

In order to integrate participants effectively into the project, it is necessary to assimilate the co-production dimension of the project, to adopt a facilitating rather than a supervisory role, and to create the conditions for the group to take ownership of the project. The advantage of involving young people in this type of approach is that it allows campaigns to potentially reach a wider audience. Because the campaigns are developed and promoted by local ‘ambassadors’, i.e. young people who have some influence on, and credibility with, their surroundings, they can also become a prevention tool for a wider audience. Training methods that promote interaction and dynamism should be favoured. As part of the youth-training initiative by the City of Montreuil, which decided to focus its campaign on the problem of fake news, the Maison de l'Europe de Paris organised an Escape Fake News game12 to give young people the necessary tools to fight against fake news, strengthen their critical thinking and raise their awareness of European news. The young people, who did not know each other, played the game and created a team spirit by motivating those who seemed less interested.

Provide training sessions for young people on the different stages of the campaigns

Within the framework of the LOUD project, young people from the project's partner cities received four training modules on the impacts of discrimination; the deepening and understanding of the concepts of culture; cultural identity and social cohesion; and the implementation (by them) of alternative campaigns.

12- https://paris-europe.eu/escape-fake-news/

Day 1: Understanding discriminatory mechanisms Module 1: Key concepts and prerequisites

Objective: Deepening of the concepts of culture, identity, interculturality, discrimination, equal opportunities and inclusive society Content to be addressed:

What does culture consist of? (Activity: the cultural iceberg) Difference between innate and acquired / personal and universal / belonging to a group and cultural diversity (activity: ‘I am’) Cultural matrix and values (activity: self-fulfilling prophecies)

Module 2: Discourse dynamics

Objective: Understanding what is discriminatory, oppressive or demagogic versus ‘alternative narrative’ Content to be addressed:

Exploring mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion (activity: hate-speech tree) Analysing an oppressive discourse (activity: analysing a political discourse) Identifying communicative and cognitive biases (activity: syllogism study)

Day 2: Designing an alternative campaign Module 3: The alternative narrative method

Objective: Exploring narrative mechanisms based on alternative campaigns Content to be addressed:

Making a narrative positive Analysing alternative campaigns

Module 4: Design workshop for an alternative campaign

Objective: Thinking about the structure of the campaign Content to be addressed:

Objective of the campaign Target audience of the campaign Form of the campaign

Plan and create an alternative narrative campaign by young people

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There are several resources for developing an alternative narrative campaign. Examples include the GAMMMA+ model13 by the European Union's Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN); the Counter-Narrative Monitoring and Evaluation Handbook by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)14, a London-based NGO “dedicated to safeguarding human rights and reversing the rising tide of polarisation, extremism and disinformation worldwide”, and with whom Efus has worked for many years; and the Council of Europe's manual We CAN! Taking action against hate speech through counter and alternative narratives15 . Within the framework of the LOUD project, we have drawn on these different resources to propose a working methodology to cities. Based on the experience of the project, we propose the following methodology, which can be adopted and used in another local context.

13- See RAN (2017). RAN guidelines for effective alternative and counter-narrative campaigns (GAMMMA+), RAN Issue Paper. 14- https://www.isdglobal.org/ 15- De Latour, A., Perger, N., Salaj, R., Tocchi, C. & Viejo Otero, P. (2017). Alternatives - Les contre-récits pour combattre le discours de haine, Conseil de l’Europe.

As mentioned above, the audit and training stages are essential for identifying the issue to be addressed and for mobilising an association or a local partner who can identify and monitor groups of young people who will be working on the campaign. Once these elements have been gathered, the local partners will need to follow the steps below:

Share the results of the audit with young people

The audit provides an overview of the discrimination phenomenon at the local level, or at the neighbourhood or even school level. Several priorities may emerge. When starting the process of creating an alternative narrative campaign, it is necessary to share the results of the audit with young people and discuss their perception of the different discrimination issues with them. For the development of the campaign, it is suggested that you focus on a single issue. Within the framework of LOUD, the audit carried out by the City of Lille identified the following four issues: gender inequality, gender and sexual orientation, community intolerance and equal opportunities. After talking with young people and discussing their feelings and experiences, the group decided to focus the campaign on the theme of equal opportunities.

Define the objective of the campaign

It is important to define the objective you want to achieve with your campaign as well as the problem you want to address with an alternative message. In this phase, it is important to ask questions such as: What do we want to see happen? What is the preferred alternative situation? What change in behaviour or perception do we want to promote?

The City of Leuven identified as a problem the lack of exchange and interaction in some schools between native and foreign pupils, some of whom have been victims of racism and discrimination. The aim of the campaign was to make all pupils aware of the existence of polarisation and discrimination, and to encourage them to be more open-minded and to interact more in and out of school.

Define the target audience

Identifying the audience the campaign is trying to reach is very important, in order to build the message you want to get across and choose the techniques and media best suited to your audience. In this phase, it is important to ask questions such as: What are the characteristics of your audience? What do they think and how do they behave? Interests (e.g. what kind of media do they use? Which places do they frequent the most?) Who has the power to bring about the desired change, i.e. which individuals, groups, entities and organisations does the campaign target? When it comes to an alternative narrative campaign, it is best to identify specific groups of people (e.g. young people aged 15–20), to avoid diluting the message. The young people of the City of Montreuil identified the fight against fake news as a priority and focused their campaign on raising awareness of this phenomenon. In studying its target audience, the municipality identified that people with a low level of education are more likely to share information knowing that “the source is not perfectly reliable” than those with a high level of education. (According to a BVA Group study, 72% of internet users who do not have a high-school diploma as well as 64% of employees and workers have already shared unreliable information, compared to a general average of 59%.)

Define the campaign message

The message depends very much on the campaign’s target audience, so at this stage it is important to think about the stories that are most likely to resonate with it. The most effective messages don't lecture people but talk to them. The message should also include elements that call the recipients to action. In this phase, it is important to ask questions such as: What is the core message of your campaign? How will this message, once defined, be delivered? What tone, language, symbols and images will be used? To disseminate their fake-news awareness message, the young people of Montreuil adopted the Chinese symbolism of the three monkeys of wisdom who have their hands over their eyes, ears and mouth. The message read: “Against fake news, have the right reflexes, be aware of appearances, check your sources, don’t spread rumours.”

Choose the right medium and messenger(s)/spokesperson(s)

The medium is the support that will be used to relay the message: it can be a video, a photo, an audio clip, a poster, or written material, such as brochures or leaflets, etc. It is important to choose the medium that is best suited to the target audience, namely the one with which they are most likely to engage and interact. Of course, it is also a question of making a choice based on the human and financial resources available.

Knowing the online habits of your target audience will also make it easier to choose online media, such as social networks (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.), websites, blogs and vlogs (video blogs), online radio and podcasts, and the online press. If you decide to use the ‘sponsored posts’ option, remember that different platforms have different advertising capabilities available for campaigns to reach their audiences.

For effective dissemination and resonance with the target audience, it is advisable to involve a credible messenger or messengers who can help deliver the message. The messenger(s) must be perceived as a credible referent by the target audience and have a positive influence on it. They could be a local YouTuber, a sportsperson, an artist, etc. The young people of the Valenciennes Métropole focused their campaign on the fight against violence against women, particularly among young people aged 16–25. They used a music video as a medium and wrote the script and lyrics themselves. Supported by the Métropole and the STAJ association, the youth group involved the Authentik Crew dance and music school, which is well known to the Métropole, and the latter contributed sound and voices to the clip and also acted as a messenger for the campaign.

Dissemination16

Meet your audience where they are

The aim of dissemination is to deliver your message to your target audience using the appropriate channels, in order to evoke the thoughts and feelings that will provoke the actions sought by the campaign. In other words, dissemination means meeting your audience where they are and adapting your content to the channels you use.

Choose and combine the right channels

The communication channel is the place where you publish/present/ disseminate the content of the campaign (videos, posters, articles, etc.). Most campaigns use both offline and online channels, each offering different tools to measure their impact, although this is easier to do with online channels because they incorporate measurement features.

16- The following is taken from the webinars organised by the LOUD project in the Spring/Summer of 2020, with contributions from Gifty Boachie, Data Strategist.

When choosing your communication channels, you need to take different aspects into account. The first is the public’s presence and reactions: “Is your audience present on this channel, and why do they use it?” Another aspect is cost: some channels are more expensive than others because ‘you pay for attention’. A third aspect is the ‘degree of ownership’, i.e. the difference between, for example, your Facebook page, which you own, and an article published in a local newspaper following your press release (thus a free advertisement you have ‘earned’), or an advertisement in a magazine (which you have paid for).

Offline dissemination

Depending on the nature and theme of your campaign and the characteristics of your audience, it is also advisable to use offline channels, for example by identifying and targeting ‘brand ambassadors’ who will relay the campaign on their social and real networks. Indeed, the digital space should be seen as an additional space, which, integrated into a global/crosscutting strategy, can strengthen the prevention of discrimination and extremism. Maintaining the link with offline actions is, therefore, essential. Another method of offline dissemination is to organise awareness-raising meetings or workshops that can be facilitated by a local journalist. In this case, the evaluation will include the number of participants in the event, the number of mentions in the media and the recall rate, i.e. the number of people who remember the campaign after it has been broadcast.

Points to consider:

Duration: when deciding how long to run your campaign, think about how you can have the greatest impact on your audience. If your campaign is about raising public awareness, you may want to create ‘buzz’ quickly to capitalise on media coverage or events. Other campaigns may try to engage with a more specific audience over a longer period of time.1 Best times to post on social networks: think about the times when your target audience is most present on social networks.

For example, young people aged 15–20 are more likely to use social networks outside of school and at weekends. If your target audience is institutions or other local stakeholders, expect your publications to have the least impact when published in the late afternoon on weekdays and on Saturdays (lower reach). Post regularly: if you post several times a day, space your posts every few hours. Trolling or strong negative reactions: do not delete or ignore comments on your posts. Take time to analyse what happened, why there was negative feedback, and if you consider it necessary respond to this content. If the comment is really offensive and likely to upset and discourage other users, you can delete it.

1- THE COUNTER-NARRATIVE HANDBOOK, ISD, available at: https://www. isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Counter-narrative-Handbook_1.pdf

The pros and cons of social networks

Social networks make content attractive to young people, as they are omnipresent in their daily lives. According to studies, young people spend an average of four-and-a-half hours a day on social networks. In addition, videos or photos always have a higher reach than written messages. It is therefore worth investing time in a good video or poster for dissemination purposes. Each social network has its pros and cons when it comes to disseminating campaign content. Facebook is very powerful with an audience of 2.2 billion monthly active users, but advertising on this platform is expensive. Instagram is the second most-followed social network in the world, with one billion monthly active users and a younger audience than Facebook, but its focus on visual communication alone can turn off some advertisers and is not suitable for some campaigns. The TikTok video platform only dates back to 2016 but already has an audience of 500 million monthly active users, mostly teenagers aged 14 to 19. Twitter (330 million monthly active users), LinkedIn (660

million members) and Snapchat (210 million daily active users) are also powerful social networks, each with their own qualities and flaws. On Twitter and Instagram in particular, hashtags are an effective way to convey a message and to measure, in real time, whether the public is picking it up and spreading it. It is recommended to create short, punchy and assertive hashtags without overusing them.

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