This paper has been supported by a fellowship from China Scholarship Council (CSC) to Jianqin Wang [No. 201406100057].

“Jamal al-Khatib” is a participatory project in the field of P/CVE, which aims at delivering alternative narratives to adolescents via digital youthwork. The target groups are youngsters who either sympathize with jihadi propaganda online, or are vulnerable to online recruitment efforts. The project was initiated by a former in prison whose intention, after he extricated himself from the jihadi scene, was to prevent other youngsters from repeating his mistakes. Besides professionals from various backgrounds reaching from social work and Islamic studies to film production and digital content management, the team consists of adolescents who either dropped out of the jihadi scene or proved to be resilient against recruitment efforts of jihadi online actors. According to the project’s peer-to-peer approach, their experiences form the basis for the campaign’s contents. Resorting to the method narrative biography-work, videos featuring alternatives to jihadist propaganda are produced. A lot of effort is put into adapting to the audiovisual appearance of IS propaganda. The videos are posted on different social media platforms, delivered to the target group via the fictional character “Jamal al-Khatib” and discussed in the course of online street work. Evaluation demonstrates that the project was successful in attracting a hard-to-reach target group online.

Extremist and terrorist groups are known to have used games and gaming successfully in their online recruitment and indoctrination campaigns. What are the possibilities for using online games to generate resilience against extremism? Current research on online counter and alternative narratives generally acknowledges effects in terms of awareness raising, yet is skeptical when it comes to impact, mostly owing to the limited evidence and empirical research in this area. A related problem with the early counter and alternative narrative campaigns, however, has been not only a lack of initial preparatory work on understanding the radicalization process itself — specifically, on how narratives are produced and disseminated — but also on aspects relating to the audience, the messenger, and the communications strategy more broadly. In designing DECOUNT, an online game that incorporates both counter and alternative narratives, we have taken these aspects into consideration and created an accessible, easy-to-use product by first researching the following: individual radicalization processes; extremist online propaganda narratives and imagery; and the preferences and issues of the target population. We then created and tested the game and placed it on particular social media platforms (Instagram, YouTube/Let’s Play), with appropriate targeting. Finally, we carried out a number of evaluation procedures, including a qualitative assessment and two quasi-experiments. This paper outlines this preparatory, creative, and evaluative work, and contextualizes it within the literature on the role played by online platforms and content both in individual radicalization processes and in creating resilience.