Social work skills being used to intervene with far-right extremists online
Published by Professional Social Work magazine - 29 March 2019
Social workers are being employed to intervene online with far-right extremists and talk them away from committing hate crime.
They have been recruited by London-based Moonshot CVE, a social enterprise consultancy specialising in using technology to disrupt violent extremism.
The company believes social work skills can be an effective countermeasure to engage with people expressing dangerous views in the digital space.
Moonshot CVE’s co-founder Vidhya Ramalingam said the company was monitoring the effectiveness of the interventions.
“We employ teams of social workers to start conversations with people online and turn them away from violence,” she told Radio 4's Today programme.
“This is experimental work and we are in the early stages of trial testing if you can take conversations in an online space between social workers and an individual and transition them from an online conversation to an offline intervention.”
The threat posed by far-right extremists was highlighted by two of the UK’s leading counter-terrorist figures.
MI5 director general Andrew Parker and Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick said there was a growing threat of violent extremism from both the “extreme right and left” in addition to Islamic extremism.
They said technology, including data analytics and other related high-tech tools, had a role to play in tackling the problem.
Ramalingam said communities populated by people who expressed extremist views were "flourishing".
“That presents an opportunity for us. They leave a digital footprint and we can find them and engage in preventative intervention work in the online space. There is an opportunity to turn them away before they leave their bedrooms and carry out an attack.”
Moonshot CVE describes itself as “a boutique start-up” that specialises in countering violent extremism.
Prior to starting the company, Ramalingam led the EU’s first cross-governmental programme on far-right terrorism an extremism.
This article is published by Professional Social work magazine which provides a platform for a range of perspectives across the social work sector. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the British Association of Social Workers.
