PRECOBIAS (Prevention of Youth Radicalisation Through Self-Awareness on Cognitive Biases) is a user-centered counter-narrative campaign project that centers around the mental processes and cognitive biases at stake when youngsters, especially the ones either vulnerable to radicalisation or already radicalised, 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. The project aims to bring about behavioural change, dissuading target youngsters from promoting extremist content online.
To reach these objectives, we target youngsters directly through a social media campaign, social workers and teachers by providing them a MOOC about cognitive biases and radicalisation, together with specific toolkits with ready-to-use activities, and civil-society organizations with an international one-day training programme that will afford them to train professionals involved with counter extremism at local level.
PRECOBIAS, which involves six European countries, is funded by the ISFP programme of the European Union. It is running between December 2019 and November 2021.