Webinars

AAP's Ben James webinar - Combatting Misinformation

Rebecca Shaw   0:20

OK guys.

We might get underway because we've got a fair bit to cover off in an hour, and I imagine there's gonna be a fair few questions at the end.

Firstly good you know, good afternoon everyone.

Thanks so much for joining again.

We do appreciate your time, especially in your lunch break.

My name is BEC and I did a communications for the NSW Countering Viol, extremism engagement and support programme.

Some of you may be already familiar with the work that we do, but today is not about us.

It's just giving.

Context on who is facilitating. Today we begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay our respects to the elders, past and present. We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today and appreciate that people are in.

Fact beaming in from all over our guest today is Ben James from AAP.

Fact Check Ben is a journalist, editor and author with 15 years experience working in news organisations in Australia.

And the UK?

And he has been editor of AAP Fact Check since February 2022, having previously worked across various News Corp titles.

Today's session is being recorded just for information, so if there's anyone that misses the session.

I'll be I can share the file with you or it will be put on our step together website after the fact.

Just give our IT department a little while to manage that one.

I'll moderate questions that come through the chat.

And willing to cover off anything that is not answered during the presentation, obviously. And I will also moderate questions that we don't have time for as Ben's kindly offered to answer those after the session.

So just reach out to me directly and I'll make sure or put in the chat and I'll make sure we get back to you within a reasonable time frame.

And if you can also now just also make sure your mic and video is off.

That would be wonderful.

So again, just to give you a little bit of context on who we are and why we have asked Ben to present today the engagement support unit has two public facing early intervention awareness programs.

So that is a step together helpline which goes national under Home Affairs as of July 1.

This is an anonymous support line offering advice on all things VN, extremism and counter violent extremism.

And a triage point for referral to other support services.

Or eligibility into our engagement and support program or a similar program in each each state as of July 1, the engagement and support program is a voluntary face to face case management program for people involved with violent extremism. And it's also a we also sort of under our.

Remit is a broader education and awareness on all things violent extremism.

So hence our series of webinars and we have had.

Been we had the pleasure of having been at one of our international conferences.

Recently and so, we're delighted to have him back.

His presentations are very thought provoking, especially in the current climate.

And Speaking of this slide is just to give you a little bit of an snippet of what our current violent extremism landscape looks like. And as you can see, it's largely geared around the online world.

When it comes to sort of the, you know, dangers around violent extremism.

So it's it's these are all issues related to the online world and why young people are the focus of of the work that we do at the ESU.

So Mike Burgess, Director General of ASIO in his National threat assessment, speak to a disturbing resurgence in youth terror cases.

At the social media summit of late 2024, I think it was October, he said, that all of the nation's most recent terror cases were allegedly perpetrated by young people, including one as young as 14.

And that speaks to us because we've had to reduce our referral agent to ESP to 10, which is pretty alarming, but 20% of Asio's priority counter terrorism cases involve minors. So social media and digital technologies are really fueling threats to national security.

And it's this violent, misogynist and violent extremist propaganda.

That's a growing problem.

You guys may or may not be familiar with the new Netflix series adolescents. If you've seen it, it's really sparks a lot of conversation around violent misogyny, and you can see the misogynistic exposure example above in these slides where it says, you know, it takes an average of.

26 minutes for young men to be exposed to misogynistic content on Tiktok or YouTube shorts, regardless of whether they were searching for it or not.

But another one is that it takes just two clicks to go between.

A page advocating a hardline religious interpretation.

And a telegram network that was explicitly pro ISIS and you know, that's obviously with propaganda material promoting Australian terrorists.

So there's there's this real need for teaching media literacy.

And it's never been more critical.

And it needs to be done at a younger and younger age.

And on that note, I'm going to hand over to our guest, Ben James, because this is absolutely the work that he does.

So over to you, Ben.

He's going to share his screen and slides with you now.

 

Ben Jame   5:43

Thank you very much.

Can you see my slides now?

Can I get a thumbs up for me?

 

Rebecca Shaw   5:48

Yes. Yep. We can. Yep.

 

Ben Jame   5:51

Good stuff. All right.

Yeah. Thank you all for coming today.

It feels like every time I do a presentation like this, I say it's, you know, the topic is more important than ever.

But yeah, that certainly seems to be the case again.

So just briefly on what we'll cover in the next 40 minutes or so, I'll give you a quick introduction to AP Fact Check and the work we do.

We'll talk through some of the missing disinformation that we're seeing in Australia.

We'll talk about who's behind the claims we come across.

I'll touch on some of the emerging threats and finally what we can, what we can do about it.

But First off, a bit of an intro into AAP Fact Check now. AAP or Australian Associated Press. Many of you will have heard of AAP is the national News Wire founder back in in 1935.

AP Fact Check meanwhile, dates back to just 2019.

We set up back then with some seed funding from Google initially to Fact Check the NSW election that year.

We soon became signatory with the international Fact Checking Network.

Now that's the kind of global standards body for fact checkers and that accreditation we receive is is hard one, you know, we have to demonstrate the consistency and unbiased fact checking of the highest standard.

We're also Fact Check partners with Meta.

So that's Facebook, Instagram and Threads and Tiktok as well.

So this involves working with those companies to minimise the spread of harmful misin disinformation on platforms, and we're the only fact checker in in Australia and New Zealand to work with matter and TikTok in that way there are about 15 of us in the in the fact.

Team programming based in Sydney.

But also people in Melbourne, Brisbane, New Zealand and London as well.

So what is it that fact checkers do?

We split our work into kind of three distinct buckets.

First of all, we have our debuges.

Now this is really a kind of bread and butter.

This is reacting to claims as we come across them.

It's investigating them and making a ruling on them before publishing a Fact Check and through our work with Meta and TikTok. This enables us to make an intervention.

This is typically kind of applying a warning to a piece of content.

With a link to our Fact Check, which will then reduce the spread on those platforms and up until about 18 months ago, this was pretty much all we did.

And look, don't get me wrong, it's a really impactful.

You know way to do things, particularly through the partnership with the social media companies.

However, the downside to debunks is that they take time. We can't afford to be wrong.

You know, our reputation is everything when it comes to fact checking.

And yeah, look, falsehoods are generally exciting.

They're scandalous and they're scary, and as a result they spread its speed. I think, as the saying goes, you know, lies halfway around the world by design. The truth has got its boots on so well. We make these really important interventions with our social media partners, with Deb.

Can't prevent the harm being done while we're researching and writing these, these debunks, and we obviously can't catch everything.

So we've recently started doing what are known as prisons now. Pre bunks are really seen as industry best practice at the moment. This is about kind of getting ahead of the problem. Predicting the missing disinformation coming down the line and warning people in advance.

And it uses what's called inoculation theory, whereas much like a vaccine, you can introduce a bit of the bad stuff to the audience so that when they come across in real life, they can, they can pat it away and beat it.

So for example, with the election that we got coming up, we know a lot of the claims that we're likely to see.

We've covered elections before.

We can therefore pre warn people, we can let them know what they're likely to see.

We can let them know some of the themes of disinformation that they're likely to come across and let them know in advance why these claims are false, misleading or whatever, and that enables the audience to then process that false and harmful piece of information when they come across.

It in real life.

And the third category of work that we do is media literacy, which Rebecca touched on earlier, and this is this is about equity in the general public with the skills necessary to be able to process the massive information.

You know, they encounter each and every day.

You know, if you if you think about how much new information we are met with every day now it's it's incredible compared to you know 10/15/2020 five years ago.

So we really need the skills to be able to kind of process.

That information in a helpful way.

And look, this can be anything from, you know, talking about verification tools to warning about disinformation techniques or, you know, discussing what makes a good, you know, a good source.

Are these three buckets make up what we call our three pronged approach?

We have pre bunks attempting to predict and warn people.

You have a debunks reacting to claims as the appear and making that intervention, and then we have media literacy.

Which is ensuring the general public has the necessary skills.

Now, I could probably spend the whole hour doing a bit of a deep dive into exactly what we're seeing, but I'll give you a quick overview of some of the some of the key recurring themes. And while this is not an exhaustive list, this perhaps covers about 90.

Percent of of what we encounter at new Fact Check.

First half crisis in crisis events and you know, bad actors love a crisis.

Anything they can use to influence or stir up fear and hatred, you know, while people are particularly emotional, you know, or vulnerable.

So picture there is the aftermath of the the Bondi junction attacks last year, and the disinformation that came from that event was, you know, incredibly effective and fairly well reported on in the end.

And I think what makes crisis events particularly susceptible to missing disinformation is the absence of reliable information in those early hours as early minutes and early days.

I mean, the other big disinformation crisis event that comes to right to mind from from, you know, recent months was the Southport attack in the UK, which which led to mass disorder throughout the UK.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that later on. But as with that case, there was this vacuum of information.

In the early days.

And hours after, after the incident and and for good reason. You know, the suspect was still alive. And the police and press were, you know, adhering to strict reporting restrictions. And, you know, that's just how it is.

And perhaps this wouldn't have been a problem 20 years ago, but we're now in this social media age and there was that vacuum of information and and and people fill it.

And I think we're seeing so devastating as well.

People are searching for answers, trying to make sense of such an awful event.

And so any claims made about, you know the suspects or the motive are pounced on, you know, take the the Bondi Junction attack in those first few hours, we saw claims that, you know, the attacker was Jewish, was was Muslim, was a, you know, white nationalist was ment.

Ill was was was transgender.

Now you name it.

So yeah, crisis events are a common target and.

A recurring theme that we see time and time again.

Next up, health and science.

I joined AP Fact Check in 2022 and I reckon 90% of what you know, we were checking them as related to the pandemic in in vaccines that was that was our main workload for that first year or so.

And it's still a huge problem today.

I mean claims about vaccines and medicine.

False claims about vaccines and medicine get a huge audience in Australia.

Are these claims are having a real world impact?

I mean vaccine hesitancy is, is a huge problem at the moment and you know all of a sudden we're having outbreaks of of measles.

So yeah, it's it's a real concern.

But when talking about science, it's also things like, you know, climate science. And I think a lot of these claims come from the general kind of degrading and chipping away at the reputations of academia and science and institutions which which leads on to our next recurring theme.

Institutions are constant source of clients, both national and international, and this is not in a kind of healthy questioning of authority kind of way.

This is outright conspiracies and disinformation.

You take something like, you know, a body like the Australian Electoral Commission and the federal election we've got in in a few weeks. And of course, a journalist, we should never become complacent. But there is nothing to suggest that the AEC is, is anything other than a STR.

Neutral body concerned with running fair elections.

But the disinformation we see about the AEC every election is is relentless.

And that poses a significant problem for society when you know the body in charge of running our elections is subject to that, you know, level of disinformation. You know, we've all seen what happened in the US with the basis baseless accusations about the 2020 election.

So that's institutions.

Politics is next.

This is an obvious theme that runs through many of the others as well, and again, as journalists we should we should never be taking our eye off the ball.

But you know much of what is said.

About politicians.

About what they supposedly say about political processes and government is baseless and conspiratorial.

We obviously then have the politicians themselves and what they say, and that's obviously a lot of what we're doing at the moment during the election campaign.

And look, thankfully, we're not where the US is.

The US is at the moment, you know where you do have politicians presenting alternative facts and pushing out white falsehoods.

Look, I get it wrong there.

There are some in Australia that are moving in that direction, but generally the claims we see from our politicians are more nuanced, more misleading rather than kind of outright falsehoods.

You know, perhaps you'd call it political spin.

Now the claims come from the cherry picking of data, or from taking words and images out of context.

That's not to say it's not damaging, or that there's, you know, not a need to call it out. But thankfully, as I say, we're not where the US is at the moment and hopefully we are not going to get there either.

And perhaps a bit of a clumsy turn for this final category. But bad actors will use disinformation to target vulnerable groups of people.

Be it.

You know the transgender community, refugees, Jewish community, the Muslim community, and obviously there's a crossover with, you know, vulnerable groups and other recurring themes we've spoken about, such as such as crisis events.

So that's what we're seeing.

But who is behind it?

Who's making all these claims? And to answer this question, we had to ask ourselves why people were spreading misinformation, and we've consulted various experts on this over a number of years and they more or less narrow it down to these two main reasons. Money influence or a comb.

Of the two.

Now we did a bit of work in the aftermath of the Southport attack in England last year and spoke to several experts in the UK and Australia about this.

And I'm sure most of you will know about the Southport incident, but just quickly, this was a horrific attack in July last year in the UK town of Southport, a 17 year old walked into a Taylor Swift themed dance class and began attacking people.

Indiscriminately 3 young girls died and the teenager was arrested shortly after.

The.

Now, as previously mentioned, there was a vacuum of information in the hours and days afterwards, and that vacuum was filled by various sources, leading to numerous false claims and speculation about the attackers motives. Is immigration status is country of birth things he said at the scene? All sort.

And this in turn led to a series of, you know, riots in which mosques and immigration hotels were targeted.

So yeah, going back the experts we spoke to split those who had made the claims relating to South Thor into three.

Groups there were those with a direct ideological link to the disinformation.

Those without a particular link.

And attention seekers, those seeking attention now, this certainly struck a chord with us.

It matched what we tend to see in Australia with with crisis events and major kind of disinformation narratives in particular, we closely match what we had seen with Bondi stabbings just just a few months before. So I just want to take you through those groups in a bit.

More detail.

In relation to the Southport attack.

So firstly, there's those with the direct ideological motivation.

So in this case this was, you know, the far right anti immigration groups anti Muslim groups.

And you know, these groups were quick to jump on claims that the attacker was silent.

Seeker was was Muslim, had shouted Allah Akbar as he attacked the girls.

Now this was a crisis event that they could use to their advantage to push forward a specific agenda tied to the tied to the event.

The picture there some of you may recognises is well known far right? Agitator and thug Tommy Robinson, who was one of the main players.

Regarding the kind of disinformation around South Wharf.

The second group of those without a kind of direct ideological motivation linked to the disinformation, but but simply a desire to create discord and to to to build tensions and to split society.

So this is often where foreign influence and foreign powers come in.

I think there's a couple of a couple of months ago, the former head of the Russian desk at MI6 said that there was clear Russian involvement in this information that followed the South Pole attacks, which ultimately led to the Wiors.

Now, I don't think Moscow has any real interest in UK Border policies or, you know, crime rates in Southport or whatever. You know, the disinformation that was in the claims that were being spread at the time, but you know, it has an interest in destabilising a, you know.

A Western Power, when it's particularly vulnerable.

And that's exactly what the result was in this case.

And you can see the potential parallels here in Australia.

So the image there is.

A man called Simeon Boykoff, otherwise known as is Aussie Cossack, or Putin's man in Australia.

And he was one of the main spreaders of disinformation following the Bondi Steppings, and that's what he does.

You know, he doesn't hide his allegiance to to the Kremlin. He he agitates.

He tries to divide and stir up trouble and he's incredibly effective.

And the final group that our experts identified are those, you know, who don't really have an ideological motivation or a particular motivation disrupt.

They just like the attention, be it because they're vain or because they can monetize the situation. And in the case of Southport, this is where your Andrew Tate's of this world's come in.

It's about power. It's about influence.

It's about. It's about money.

It's about wanting to shock and offend and to have people talking about you.

And obviously Tate is the extreme end of this, but we see these types of, you know, attention seekers all the time in, in the MIS and disinformation that we see in Australia.

For example, it started pandemic.

You have these very kind of ordinary people with just a couple of dozen followers, perhaps, who started making a few videos railing against the lockdowns and restrictions and you know, I'm sure they're genuinely held views at the time.

And within a few weeks, they had amassed these amazing.

Following hundreds of thousands.

Well, not hundreds, thousands, hundreds or thousands.

Of people who were, you know, pretty much hanging on their every word.

Some tried to monetize it and have been very successful, but I think others just like the attention and you know what we noticed was that as soon as the pandemic died down, you know, they would switch the next thing, be it, you know, the voice of the par.

Or US politics.

You know, whatever they could show on the road and you know, potentially keep the money rolling in and stay relevant.

And of course, the disinformation following the Southport killings was central to what sparked the disorder, which then followed.

You know which is to say this this problem is not theoretical, it's an academic.

It's having real world consequences.

So that's where we are now.

But where are we going?

What are the major and emerging threats we're facing in in 2025 and beyond?

Well the 1st 2 on this list would have been on my list this time last year.

The third, however, is is worryingly new, and I'll go into them in a bit more detail shortly.

But yeah, firstly, not just their images, but our text generation audio as well.

There's foreign interference, which we kind of touched on a little bit in. Foreign interference often goes in hand with with the assistance of AI now as well. And finally big tech, whether or not big tech and social media companies are interested in doing anything about this at all.

Because yeah, we certainly need them on side if we're going to make headway here.

So AI, some of you may have seen this video before. It's it's weird.

It's a bit gross and it sticks with you, but there is reason for me showing it to you today.

So let's endure a little bit of it now.

There's ack.

Uncle Phil, come try this fresh pasta of Bel Air.

OK.

That's probably enough of that.

I'm not sure if you could hear the audio on that.

Give me a thumbs up or thumbs down just quickly if you could.

Thumbs up. OK, that probably makes it even worse.

Yeah, look, it's nightmare inducing stuff.

This dates back to March 2023 and was a result of someone using text to video AI to generate a montage. Using the prompt Will Smith eating spaghetti.

It's awful.

It's it's, it's cringey, but it's also rubbish, you know, the point being that you know, AI is not where it was two years ago.

It's not where it was six months ago.

It's getting better.

All the time and it's getting hard.

By comparison.

This is a polymer now.

Media literature campaign.

We did a few months ago and I'll play it quickly now.

Hopefully the audio will work, but if not, yes, you'll see a series of images and one's AI.

One's real and you have to guess which one is real and which is AI.

See how you go.

Can you tell the difference between a real photograph and an AI generated image?

Which image is the real photo?

What about these?

And these.

Which of these is real?

And which one here?

How do you think you did?

In every case the second image was the real photograph. AI is making it harder than ever to tell what's real from what's not.

That's why it's important to think carefully about the content.

Tricky, right?

I mean, some are easier than others, but you know, I certainly didn't get them all when when I did it.

And it's, you know, it's my job to spot these things.

So yeah, and I know they they're moving along quickly, but that is how people are viewing these things on their phones.

They're swiping through.

You know, they're taking things in a matter of seconds.

You know, the point being that we're no longer in the world of spotting 7 fingered people and missing limbs.

You know I can't tell you the amount of time we spend as a team poring over.

You know images genuine images.

Second guessing whether they're AI or real, and you know there's no quick fix at the moment. You know there's no reliable tool out there that gets it right 100% of the time.

And there's no consistency with, you know, the approach to, say, watermarking or anything like that so.

It is increasingly a concern and and and.

Certainly takes up a lot of a lot of our efforts.

Remind me, can you tell the?

But just as concerning if, if not more concerning, I think it is what AI can do for disinformation spreaders of text. Now this next example really hammered that home for me.

This here is a a man called Mohammed Shabaya Shakat.

I would be very surprised if anyone has ever heard of him.

There's no real need for you to know him, but weekend crossing when looking into several false or misleading posts circulating Australia relating to cultures last year.

We managed to track him down online and set up a zoom call with him.

You know, nice enough chat, 28 year old living in Lahore, Pakistan, studying at university.

But his side hustle was running a series of satire web pages, bumping out, you know, ridiculous stories.

Which, you know, preyed on people's prejudices, people's fears and and and generally, polarization in society.

You know, he pitched his work at Sattai.

But this is, you know, it wasn't satire as as you and I, you or I would know it.

He was adding the smallest possible satire label, which 99% of people were not seeing.

You know, in order to prevent the content from being factored.

But certainly most of those who are seeing his content were seeing it as if it was real and believe me to be real. And it's really good, you know, well written append as if you know, written by a journalist, a tabloid.

It had that sharp, catchy, concise kind of style to it.

And he happily told us about all the cash he was making from from driving ad revenue. As a result, to to to his website and other websites.

Uh, and it was relentless.

You know, story after story after story.

He pump these stories out all perfectly.

Kind of crafted.

And we asked him.

We asked him how he did it, how big his team was, and he said it was all AI generated.

He just put a few prompts into ChatGPT, and he'd get these perfectly crafted news pieces, perfectly designed to prey on people's fears, to prey on people's anxieties and prejudices, and ultimately to generate clicks and money.

You know, masses of content polluting the information environment just through a few prompts.

Five years ago to do something like this, you'd have needed a team of semi talented copywwwwers to put all this together. But today is the click of a button.

Point being, it's never been easier to be a spreader of disinformation.

AI will do the bulk of the work for you, and that is a major concern for us, particularly when it comes to when it comes to scale.

Moving on to foreign interference, now, along with AI, this is the other big threat. That's that's really kind of top of our agenda at the moment and I'm sure it has always been that, but we certainly more aware of it now.

For us, there are three main categories of claims we usually associate with with foreign interference.

Obviously there are specific events of interested to to the foreign power in question, so we had a lot from Russia on the Russia Ukraine conflict, for example.

Then there was a binary kind of a motive.

Topics we know there is making the claims that, you know, perhaps not interested in the topics as such, but they provide the perfect opportunity to, you know, drive a wedge and you know, create discord.

You take something like the voice of Parliament. We did not expect that to be the disinformation event that it was.

And look, we don't have anything definitive on this, but we certainly suspect that a lot of the claims that.

That we were seeing were coming from overseas.

Now say that was Russia or China or whoever.

Now I doubt they have had any interest in the, you know, the proposal for indigenous people to have a non binding say on matters relating to them. But you know, they had interest in creating discord in a, you know, Western democracy and what better way to do that.

Than to, you know, stir the pot in a binary. Yes or no vote, which is which is dividing a nation.

And then breaking news in crisis events, which we've kind of already spoken about, and this is particularly when there is that absence of reliable information.

It's the perfect.

In for for disinformation spreaders to to really make a really making an impact and pack a punch.

Now, sometimes it's easy to spot foreign interference, say the likes of Simeon Boykoff Aussie Cossack, who I mentioned earlier.

Now he doesn't hide his allegiance to Russia or Putin.

But he's incredibly effective.

But sometimes it is harder to spot.

For example, we started to receive emails like this several months ago.

All were from Western sounding names and and generally appears to be related to the Russia Ukraine War.

It was a little strange to be getting so many requests to check matters relating to the war, but you know we acted in good faith.

We responded to these people every time they contacted us.

You know, we even looked into some of the clients.

But we just kept getting them day after day after day, and while we were flattered that people were coming to us to ask for us to look at misinformation, something didn't quite add up.

So we sent a sample of these emails to a digital analysis company.

We work within the US.

And they looked into these emails and they tracked those who were sending them.

And came back to us and said they were located in a town about 40 kilometers outside of Moscow.

And it turns out we weren't the only fact checkers to receive such emails.

There were dozens of other organizations that received, you know, very similar and we still received them today.

I got one this morning.

And the intention is supposedly twofold.

Firstly, to distract us from from some of the claims, we perhaps should have been looking at in relation to the war and you know, potential war crimes.

But secondly, and apparently this has happened to other fact checkers.

The intention is to get us to write and publish a Fact Check, which they would then selectively translate and republish it and push it out to the Russian people and say, look, even the western fact checkers have said, you know, XYZ, whatever it may be.

But the point being, foreign interference is happening.

It is.

Here it is now.

And it's something we certainly need to be alive to.

Finally, on to big tech and social media. Now, as I previously said, we need big tech and social media companies to be on side if we're going to fight this X or Twitter as it was previously known, is a prime example of what happens when there is a.

Lack.

Of will from the from you know the social media platform. I think we can all agree that X is a bit of a Wild West.

And so I was looking at some research last week and look, it's all pointing in the same direction.

The EU did a major piece of work on this and found that, you know, by far it had a large proportion of disinformation of all the major platforms and just for the election last year it was estimated false or misleading claims from from Elon Musk late into the.

Election had been seen by 2 billion people.

You know that's not from all users across the platform.

That's just from the bloke who's running it.

Look, since master's come in, he's obviously slashed.

You know the trust and safety teams.

There's there's there's no relationship with fact checkers and he's reinstated.

You know, several known spreaders of disinformation onto the platform.

He's brought his trust into community notes to protect users against harmful content, but that is simply not doing the job.

I think that's clear to see and for those who don't know, community notices basically Crowdsource Fact Check in people like Denise the context.

Opposed they had corrections and and if enough people and the right people agree, then a note is added to to the post in question and look, it works pretty well for things like scams where there's this kind of consensus.

But the problem is that for a community not to appear publicly, there needs to be consensus across the political spectrum of other people.

Contributing to community nights, so anything relating to politics, to social issues.

Is to ending to the culture wars.

Anything like that is unlikely to ever have a community node attached to it, and that's why as you see there, I think it's just around 8% of community notes end up appearing on.

X and look the Trump in the White House and and you know.

Musk, supposedly having great influence over Trump.

You know the theories that this is more the direction social media companies will take.

I certainly hope that is not the case.

But yeah, if it if it does, that's that's gonna make our role. You know, a lot more, lot more difficult.

And that is that is a real concern for us.

So what can we do?

And look, make that mistake.

This this is a huge threat to liberal democracies around the world.

You know, a couple of things from the outset, I'd say there needs to be real joined up approach on this.

It isn't something fact checkers can solve alone.

It isn't something, you know governments or police can solve alone.

There needs to be joined up thinking and everyone needs to play a part in this, including social media companies and big tech.

Traditionally, traditional fact checking and and by that I mean D banks are a great intervention.

You know, I see is, is the firefighters, if you like, you know, putting out the fires as they pop up and before they get out of control, we kind of the last line of defense, but it does need to be more than that.

There needs to be public education, you know, fire safety if you like. You know, we need to educate people to spot the dangerous signs and to extinguish the flames before they get out of control.

You know, if you want to run with that and RG, we need people to encourage people to install smoke alarms. If you like to have an extinguisher at home and that is where media literacy comes in.

And is now a key component of what we do, and you know it's something which really there should be more of in schools and it's something that that really needs to be taught from an early age.

And look whenever anyone asks for my advice on media literacy.

It always comes back to the same process, the same three-step process that I talk about. And to be honest, it's quite often the disappointment to people that they want to hear about call online verification tools. We use an an AI detectors and things like that.

Which don't get me wrong, are useful, but for us the key to success is building in this three-step process into your everyday practices.

This is the basis of all fact checking and it is really is a one-size-fits-all.

Key to protecting against MIS and disinformation and it goes as follows.

So whenever you come across a piece of information, you should ask yourself 3 questions.

Firstly, who's made the claim?

Are they reliable?

What's their agenda?

Why might they be making this claim?

Why might they be saying this?

You know, they got an axe to grind.

Secondly, what's the evidence?

Have they provided any evidence?

Does it stand up scrutiny?

And finally, what do trusted sources?

Say.

And this is about reading widely.

Kind of breaking out of your algorithm bubble and and and cross referencing across various trusted sources.

For fact checkers, this can often be a long drawn out process, but it doesn't have to be.

And it can't be if it's, if it's going to work.

And look, as I said, this has to become kind of second nature to people.

So I just want to run through a really quick.

Example of using this in in real life and this is a claim.

We did a few weeks ago.

It was actually sent to me by a by a close friend.

Now this friend is university educated, although I fear he didn't listen a huge amount at university.

He has a good job, a young family. You know, he's not an unintelligent man, but he tends to get most of his news from some fairly questionable sources without applying even a basic media literacy skills, which isn't ideal, but.

The great sort of great, great source of content.

For, for for me Fact Check, as you regularly send things on.

Now he sent this a few weeks ago asking if I'd heard about it.

And the post dates as you can see that the ADL or the Anti Defamation League has declared Christianity as extremism, and anyone who follows or identifies as a Christian is a terrorist after the text that you may also be able to make out this, the Star of David.

In the Israeli flag, this is a reference to the ADL being a Jewish organization, we've set up more than 100 years ago. I think to to combat the rise of anti-Semitism.

Now this Facebook post also came with a screenshot to the ADL website.

So that was it for him.

He'd read it online.

He was there in black and white. You know, the world's got mad and the Western civilization etcetera, etcetera.

He was very happy to send this on to me and I feared he did the same with his other friends and family and this is how these things spread. Now what he should have done was go through that simple three-step process that would have stopped this dead.

In its tracks in a matter of seconds.

So let's let's do that now.

So first question, who's making a claim?

You can see here that it came from a group called Truth is power.

Now, for many that should set alarm bells off straight away.

But let's give them the benefit of the doubt and not judge a book by its cover and all that.

So a quick look at their Facebook page and the 1st post it comes up is is from Candice Owens, a well known conspiracy theorist and anti Semite who recently had a speaking tour of Australia cancel because the visa was denied.

But perhaps my friends didn't know about her.

The next post from David I perhaps well, most well known conspiracy theorists in the world.

And aside from those two, it post after post after post about Jews about the Jewish faith, many regurgitating well known anti-Semitic tropes of Jews running the media in the banks and being obsessed with money.

So that's 30 seconds of clicking and scrolling. We've got given ourselves a good idea of what we're dealing with.

Who's behind this client?

For most people, that would be enough to seriously question or even dismiss this.

But we'll move on to the second question in our in our three question process and that's what is the evidence.

Now, hopefully the folks to truth is power have told us that this is from the ADL. So quick Google of ADL and Christian identity and you have the page of which there's a screenshot on Facebook. You can see their Christian identity, extremism, terrorism and bigotry, but it soon.

Becomes apparent that it's more to the scrum and grab just as a view.

It's the rest of the page, some rather important detail.

So the ADL is not referring to Christianity or those who identify as Christian. Rather, Christian identity is a niche religious ideology, ideology and extreme right wing circles where Derance believed that the white supremacent of the superior race and the Jews of the satanic offspring of even a SER.

Also states that this group is carried out numerous acts of terrorism, particularly in the states.

So again, 30 seconds and we've identified and examined the evidence.

Completely debunking the stated claim, but let's not take the Adl's word for it.

Let's move on to our third step and look across a series of trusted sources.

Encyclopedia Britannica states Crucialise entity is very much a white supremacist group and anti-Semitic.

Next up, George Washington's University's program on extremism, talks of militants from the group engaging in terrorist acts since the 1950s.

And there, finally, the US Department of Justice again talking about promotion of paramilitary and racist activities in the name of fighting Satanism in contemporary life. So within just a few seconds, perhaps a few minutes.

Some research we can see this is nothing to do with Christianity or identifying as Christian.

This is a radical white supremacist group that engages in terrorist activity.

And for us, that three-step process is key.

It underpins everything we do at AP Fact Check is the key media literacy message. We try to get out there.

No matter who it is we're speaking to.

And look, it won't always be involved.

Is is that example I've gone through. You know, sometimes even just pondering those questions.

Quickly in your mind is all it takes.

Now it all it takes to kind of stop. Just pause and think about things and that's it.

We need this to become a habit the same way that you know, we look left and right before we cross the road or check our mirrors and blind spot before merging lanes.

These things keep us safe and we have taught those steps from an early age and now we just do them without thinking. Well, you know, this three-step process has to be the same. We need to process information.

Like this?

Without even thinking about it.

And yeah, that really is the change for us.

And that's that's the key to media literacy as we move forward, as we see it.

I'll hand over to questions now if there are any and I'll do my best to my best answer.

 

Rebecca Shaw   46:02

We've got a question here from Brandon.

 

Brandon Coffey   46:06

Hi, thanks.

That was a really good presentation and I'm sorry if you've already gone over this.

I had to step out a few times to take a phone call.

I just wanted to know if you just had any advice or tips around fact checking so you know for example, we've got the election coming up.

You know, every time I read something about Dutton has voted against this, and then you'll read something about Albanese has voted against that and then what I find happens is I'll read a lot of different articles and they'll all be quite.

Bias towards one one another, and I'd struggle to find out. Like what?

The actual truth is to to a lot of this stuff.

So just any tips or advice or any resources maybe you can suggest when fact checking?

 

Ben Jame   46:49

Yeah, I mean, again, it's difficult with politics.

There are.

There are some facts. There are some binary facts, but there's there's a lot of stuff that is, you know, you wouldn't perhaps call them.

 

Brandon Coffey   47:01

What's the best example to use?

Sorry as we know there is a lot of no truth in that one.

 

Ben Jame   47:04

Yeah. Then it has.

No.

Again, a bit repetitive, but for everything we we run through that three-step process that is our kind of framework for everything.

And yeah, it's I guess it was something like that.

It's knowing your trusted sources and having those trusted sources that you can that you can go back to and rely on.

And look, I am not suggesting that AI is perfect.

At all.

But for me, I find it a fantastic.

Starting point for anything like that.

I think it's increasingly, you know, more intuitive than the simple.

 

Francine Clough   47:51

I don't think I wanna play anymore.

 

Ben Jame   47:53

Internet Internet search and you can put.

 

Francine Clough   47:54

You need someone to play with you out there and I was still.

 

Ben Jame   47:57

Those you can put those questions.

 

Rebecca Shaw   47:57

Oh, sorry. Someone's just got their mic off. Yeah, thanks.

 

Ben Jame   48:02

You know you can put those.

You can put those questions into into ChatGPT and I'm not saying you should take that answer.

As read straight away, but it should be a start of your investigations and it is a good way of of trawling a massive information to to to hopefully get to an answer.

Yes. So I'm not sure that helps, Brandon.

 

Brandon Coffey   48:24

No, that's all good. Thanks.

Just wanted to hear your thoughts on it.

 

Ben Jame   48:25

Yes, it's very. Look, it's difficult as I say, the claims about politicians.

And planes leading into into election are are complex.

 

Brandon Coffey   48:35

In.

 

Ben Jame   48:36

It's it's probably easy in the US where there are some outright lies and outright falsehoods, and is perhaps a good thing that it's a bit more tricky to to check here.

 

Brandon Coffey   48:45

Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Ben.

 

Ben Jame   48:48

Thanks.

 

Rebecca Shaw   48:51

Has anyone else got any questions for Ben?

Often they come up after the fact as well, and I'm happy for put them in the chat and I can follow up after the fact.

Has anyone got one for now?

 

Francine Clough   49:03

Yeah. Hi, Sam. It's yeah.

Hi, Sam, can you hear me?

 

Ben Jame   49:08

Yep.

 

Francine Clough   49:09

Can you hear me?

Yeah. Hi, Sam. It's Francine here.

Yes, thank you for that presentation.

That's that's really interesting.

I suppose my question is, you know, relating to the young people who are, of course, you know, the clients of the countering extremism team.

Is it's very difficult to to address their information needs and also the reasons why they're sort of being motivated to do what they would do and think what they think.

I'm certainly.

At my age, who's on social media, I try and discern between what's fact and what's not. But I think that for my age, where I can discern between what's absolute rubbish and what's not, it's very difficult.

So how are we expecting young people who are coming through the ranks and also the next generation to know who to believe? And even though you have organisations like?

AAP to do some fact checking.

How quickly is that?

Because information now comes to us so quickly.

So quickly, if you have social media.

And I guess I'm wrong and I've listened to what you were saying, but I feel and it's certainly not as conspiracy theory that a lot of that misinformation.

Sure, it comes from the Andrew Tate's of the world, but it certainly comes also from the governments, from people such as Trump, from the Russians and so on, who have got.

Not so much monetary interest.

But certainly a political interest.

And they're the ones that are really influencing the young people to be against a particular religion or a particular culture. And you know, that's where the real issues lay right now.

 

Ben Jame   50:55

MMM.

 

Francine Clough   50:55

So what?

What is the solution?

Because I certainly don't trust the mainstream media anymore and what they might do it they may not report.

Facts or incorrect facts.

Sometimes they choose to just not report.

Support on things which in itself is creating bias, so I've made no secret of the fact that I am 100% committed to the Palestinian cause.

And yet I see that, you know, we are being doxed on social media.

We are being reported to our employees, which is the dcj um and so that political machine in those lobby groups are also very powerful.

Now I'm sure that if I was a young 14 year old, I probably could be a clight of the counter, you know, countering violence, extremism because of my views, which are against what mainstream political, you know, bodies say and the media says we've seen what's happened in Univers.

Recently.

Where students have been shut down, especially in America.

I mean, how far are we or how close are we from being like in America where we get arrested for?

For voicing our views and are they misinformed?

 

Ben Jame   52:17

There's a lot, a lot there and probably a lot of my.

 

Rebecca Shaw   52:18

I was gonna say a bit to unpack there for you, Ben.

 

Francine Clough   52:21

Yes, I know.

It's like, who do we believe?

 

Ben Jame   52:24

I think and there's probably a bit out of my price, my scope there, but in terms of you know young people, as I say, I think it just comes back to media literacy. I think it's so important.

It's it's not.

You know I'm 37.

 

Francine Clough   52:39

Yes.

 

Ben Jame   52:40

And I was not hit with, you know, the level of information daily from all manner of sources.

Is that the kids these days are met with, you know, they've all got phones, they've all got access to, you know, anything and everything.

And I just think there needs to be better education from from a young age to enable young people to be able to deal with whatever information they are met with and and and, you know, filter it and and dismiss it if needed. And you know work out what.

A good source and.

Work out the you know the disinformation narratives.

And things like that. And I think that just needs to be hammered into people from an early age.

I think that's the only way that that you can do that because as I say, look debunking is great and it makes it makes a real difference when we're working, particularly with a social media companies.

But yeah, there's there's a question of timeliness and there's, you know, we obviously can't catch everything.

So you need that.

You need those general skills.

That everyone has to be able to kind of do this stuff on their own effectively.

 

Francine Clough   53:51

See, but us as adults with the tools we're having difficulties, aren't we?

 

Rebecca Shaw   53:57

But the young people are actually more adept in understanding the tools. It's just.

 

Francine Clough   53:57

Yeah.

 

Rebecca Shaw   54:03

It's just that they need the early education and awareness. I think we've got time. Hopefully for there's a couple more in the chat. Ben, if we've got a few more minutes from Julia, what will happen if meta pools funding from AAP?

 

Francine Clough   54:07

Yeah.

 

Rebecca Shaw   54:17

Is there any way of further understanding the accreditation process for fact checking organisations?

What would be 3 recommendations?

Sorry for whole school approaches for schools in NSW to combat myths and disinformation.

 

Ben Jame   54:34

Yeah. So it's so quickly on matter. You probably would have seen early this year. So they have.

They're moving to a community notes system in in the US.

We that is just in the US for now and I hope that stays in the US or changes in the US back to a third party fact checking program.

Yeah, we're certainly kind of business as usual for now and and I hope that is, I hope that continues to the case. I think Community News is set to roll out.

Any day now, we were told.

Kind of March, April time. So we may start seeing that in the US soon.

What happens if Metropolis funding from AAP?

Well, look, we have numerous funding sources. You know, we have some fantastic partners with you know, Google and TikTok as well.

So we will, we will continue.

It obviously won't be ideal and.

You know it will reduce.

We'll have to find different ways to kind of have that impact.

But yeah, look, I hope it doesn't come to that.

I hope.

I hope they continue.

In terms of understanding the accreditation process for fact checking orgs, yeah. As I say, it's all done through the international fact Checking network, the kind of global body.

I it's been a while since I checked their website, but I imagine it will all be there.

There's there's a stringent kind of accreditation process we have to have to fill in every year.

So yes, I'm sure if you Google International fact checking network, they'll be all the details there.

And three, three recommendations for whole school approaches.

I mean, to be honest, I don't know exactly what, if anything, schools do in regards to media literacy at the moment, but whatever it is they do, they should do more.

And if they want to pay us AP to come in and do some, do some training, then we are ready and willing.

And the next question, what do you think about the proposed law to ban children under 16 from social media?

Yeah, I don't know. I it's.

I don't feel like I have looked into this enough to give.

A solid well thought out answer, so I am going to look it's interesting.

It's an interesting way to do it, whether they're still going to be able to get on some way anyway. I don't know how it's going to work, how it's going to be policed, so I'm not sure, but I don't know if banning them completely is the answer as.

I say I go back to me literally again.

I just think it's it's so important.

Kids are going to see this stuff anyway.

They just need to be able to process it and and.

You know, manage it in an effective way.

 

Rebecca Shaw   57:31

Thank you so much.

Ben, I really.

I'm sure we all appreciate you taking the time out. Such an important and very topical subject.

And like I said any more questions, please direct them my way.

After that, we'll let we'll give you guys back a few minutes of your afternoon.

Yeah, we'll catch you at the next webinar. Thanks guys.

Thank you, Ben.

 

Ben Jame   57:53

Thank you.

 

Brandon Coffey   57:58

Thanks guys.

 

Rebecca Shaw stopped transcription

Campion, Kristy   0:00
Every time I log onto teams, I'm once again alarmed by how much I have to figure out.

Alright, so thank you all for coming and listening in today on some of the incredible work that I believe is being done by the ESP team, the ESU team and the ESP program with DCJ.

So I feel it's an incredible privilege for me today to be talking to you about the incredibly complex problem that is the engagement of young people in violent extremism.

I feel all too often we talk about this particular problem, or at least this problem is reported on, [um] with what I see to be a dangerous level of simplicity.

The idea of the good kid gone bad, the idea of the young person who was just born evil, the criminal extremist mastermind who was just waiting for their opportunity to do something harmful.

The idea that these young people have knowingly, willingly and deliberately turned their back on their village, turned their back on society and show this highly nuanced.

An in-depth, ideologically informed purpose, the idea that they are. Fundamentally, irredeemable [uh].

Destructive and willing to burn down the various society to which they were born.

These are some of the ideas we see when we when we hear about people discuss the engagement of young people in violent extremism. And as the work of Heather and her team will show, and this particular study will show, I believe, is that that sort of dialogue is fundamentally unhelpful for understanding why a young person would turn to extremism.

But more importantly, that it's fundamentally dangerous in our pursuit or in our quest to try and disengage young people from violent extremism is fundamentally unhelpful to think about them in such a way.

Heather Jackson   2:35
You’ve accidentally muted yourself, Kristy.

Campion, Kristy   2:40
Thanks for that, I will not press that button again.

 

I'm thrilled to be able to present the findings of the report undertaken with my colleague Dr Emma Colvin but also undertaken in close proximity with Heather and her team [uh]  which was really about looking at the why.  

 

Why the young people become involved in violent extremism, what are factors that are making them vulnerable, what are the factors of vulnerability that have contributed towards their overall susceptibility [um] and what does this mean for how we manage these young

people.

 

So [uh] when I'm talking to you today I'm aiming to [uh] leave 15 minutes for discussion and questions [uh] so basically I'll be presenting you with an overview of what we wanted to achieve, how we did it [um] and what we think we found that's particularly relevant [um] to contemporary Australia.

 

So the main intent of this research was I think really simple but really important and that was that we had to better understand the ways in which young people became involved in violent extremism.

 

[Uh] it wasn't simply a matter of [um] of casting blame, of making assumptions.

 

We needed a really evidence-based and [uh]  informed way of understanding this problem [uh]  and stepping away from I think some of the assumptions that [um] that abound both in our society but also in others.

 

This, you know the idea of this young person radicalising alone in their bedroom with you know, the happy family outside who had no idea.

 

Like those sorts of assumptions we wanted to get to the bottom of it and figure out actually what is going on.

 

[Um], so to do that we wanted to illuminate underrecognised factors that may have impacted their engagement.

 

What was going on in their lives, who was actually getting them involved in extremism, was it a self-directed quest [um], what was really going on there that informed their recruitment and their alleged radicalisation and we hoped that in understanding this better, and in an evidence [uh]  based way, that we'd be able to provide recommendations for how we could [um] support these young people and the associated teams.

 

[Um] and get them you know [uh]  reintegrating back with our society [um] in a way that's sustainable [um] fair and just.

 

 So to do that, we [um] obviously we did the very academic thing where we read as much as we could.

 

So we conducted a review of the international domestic scholarship on the engagement of young people [um], and what we found very much in this preliminary stage was that the research overwhelmingly focused on the engagement of [um] young Muslims.

 

And this is very much in the international literature but it was also in the domestic literature as well [uh] the big gap was [um] was certainly around [uh] engagement by young people associated with extreme right-wing ideologies.

Or associated with as Heather indicated that mixed ideologies, where it wasn't really quite clear [um] you know [uh] the what their [um] immediate belief system was.

 

So that was quite a substantial gap but the other gap was [um] was actually about the young people themselves so for example, where people were [uh] looking at why young people would support the likes of Boko Haram.

 

[Uh] they were looking at it from the perspective of you they were focusing on the terrorist organisation to the extent that [uh] arguably what was going on in that young person's life was fundamentally being minimalised, trivialised or otherwise overlooked.

 

[Uh], so this sort of [um] starting point for our research was actually quite important because we realised “oh hang on, there's this substantive issue here”, which is when we talk about young people we're talking about them but we're not actually “engaging” with what's going on with them.

 

[Um], so that really [uh]  was important because it highlighted to myself and Emma a blind spot [um] in the academic field, which could have implications for how the community sees this problem but also how they're managed [um] [uh] across departments.

 

So from that point we then reviewed files, [um] associated with young people [um] deidentified files associated with young people, [uh] who had involved, who had been involved or affiliated with violent extremism in any way.

 

[Uh], and we also conducted quite extensive interviews [uh]  with members of the ESU so that was six plus hours of interviewing [uh]  which was incredibly useful for us in terms of the very real challenges faced by practitioners in this space.

 

But also an extremely nuanced view of the challenges being faced by the young people that they were working with on a daily basis.

 

So what we were really interested in and I'm sorry for how this slide looks, I know it's a lot, but what we were really interested in was [um] the young person's context, what was really going on.

 

Were there mental health issues that perhaps hadn't been diagnosed or weren't perhaps being managed, was there some aspect there that could have indicated neurodiversity.

 

If so, what and what did that mean, were their experiences of trauma, and this one was an interesting one for us because we knew from the literature that [um] adults who were engaged in white supremacy, in particularly in the United States had reported a higher level of childhood trauma than people associated with the extreme left.

 

So that was interesting we wanted to know what was going on there [um] but also education what was going on [um] with school and socialisation.

 

So what was going on in their social lives but what this did is that gave us this idea of the young person [um] and what they were going through, which enabled us to go a little bit deeper.

 

[Um] sort of in a in a linear fashion so okay we know this young person has these [um] these challenges that they're facing, what else is going on and this is where the environmental factors came in.

 

 Such as, were they exposed to violence, did they have experiences of violence were they had they committed prior offences, what did other aspects of their life look like, did they have friends, did they have secure family relationships [um], had their house just burned down, had they just witnessed a death, [um] was someone in the family terminally ill?

 

Like looking at the stresses [um] was really important for us to identify the cognitive opening that may have made them more [uh] vulnerable to recruitment or to being radicalised.

And also the educational outlook was really a matter of us saying, well what did the future look like for these young people.

 

Because that was really important in understanding well [um] you know the overall why [um] that we were really trying to understand there.

 

When it came to recruitment this was a bit tricky of course because the it's not like we were walking into a fully fleshed data set [um] sometimes there was a high measure of [um] unknown variables, but…

 

What we were really looking at was, what could have [um] impacted their being recruited into violent extremism.

 

So what were their exposures if we could identify any [um], what were the relationships [uh] who had approached them, had they approached someone, was it online?

 

And this is one of the things we see a lot of which is the idea that, you know all these young people are radicalising online.

 

Okay well is that true, [um] or was there an offline dynamic as well [um], were they seeking out extremist organisations or were they being sought out, did they know that they were being recruited or did they not?

 

And you know, in a context where we're seeing headlines [um] that are [um], for example indicating you know [uh] children as young of young as 10 are being [uh] recruited by Neo-Nazi organizations.

 

Okay well, did that 10-year-old know, [uh] that they were being recruited?

 

These were some of the questions that we had around recruitment, [um] and there weren't the answers that we thought there should be [uh] in the field of knowledge.

 

Which is why this [um] research was so important.

 

And finally we're looking at radicalisation, were they actually radicalised?

Because of course you can participate in violent extremism without being radicalised and that's a well established fact.

 

[Um] if they were being radicalised or if they were radicalised, how could we identify that?

 

[Um], and so basically what we were looking at there was their engagement with narratives, [um] the possession of material [um], and that was contrasted with.

 

What was happening in the environmental [um] and personal contexts, and of course we looked at networks.

 

So are the are young people [uh] being radicalised you know by shadowy International Terror networks?

 

Or was it someone around the corner, you know what was that interplay there between the domestic and the transnational [um] between the online and the offline.

 

So we started this research with a lot of questions [um] and quite [uh] fortunately with the support of [uh] the team and particularly through the interviews, we were able to come to a couple of conclusions that I think work towards understanding the engagement of young people in violent extremism.

 

So I'll start at the really high level of who were these young people [uh] that we were [um] trying to understand better.

 

So the first thing to say, is that they were a majority male.

 

[Um] so it was not possible for us to conduct a gendered analysis [um] of the data.

 

In terms of age, they generally were [um] between 13 and 27 [um] so a median of 19 years old.

 

Now what was [um] important I think to mention with this study, is our conceptualisation of young people [um] was from [uh] was from 12 to [um] to 24. Because that is generally speaking [um] according to [um] certain Australian guidelines the age of [um] of cognitive maturity.

 

[Uh], so we took a very broad view of young person which is why [um] I'll only [uh] occasionally refer to them as children and that's if I [um] if I'm um talking specifically about a certain age bracket.

 

In terms of where they lived, and this is the other thing we [um] we sort of find [um] particularly in some of the news reporting.

 

There's this idea that there are hotpots of extremism [uh] around Australia and that certain places just have to be worse [uh] than others.

 

And that [um] you know that sort of idea is contributed to by [um] by comments that would indicate all you know [um] the shadowy Neo-Nazi groups are you know gathering in [um] hotpots around Australia and saluting the flag and all that sort of thing.

 

Well actually we found that, [um], that realistically that there was [uh] considerable presence in regional areas and there was considerable presence in metro areas.

 

So it wasn't a matter of going yes well they're all from this one town you know, or they're all from [um] this one Community.

 

Really it was [um], it was both regional and urban so I don't think we didn't find that geography [um] in such a way was an indicator of really anything.

 

We did find the 41% identified as an ethnic minority [um] which is important for some of the context I'll be discussing [uh] next.

 

And many of these people had come to the [um] the ESU through referrals from primarily from police organisations such as AFP but also from the likes of corrective Services New South Wales [um] and a couple of others but [um] I'll make another mention of them later I think.

 

So [uh] generally speaking what did we find in terms of youth vulnerability?

 

So I guess the main thing to highlight is that there's been a lot of discussion around neurodiversity and young people [um] and of course there are certain aspects of neurodiversity [um] that could very well be manipulated by adult recruiters and that was something we went into this project with a really firm awareness of.

 

So what we found, was that [um] 17% had confirmed ASD diagnosis, but 29% there was suspected or [um] contradictory information around diagnosis relating to neurodiversity.

 

What we found almost overwhelmingly though, was comorbidity of factors so it was never just neurodiversity.

 

There was always [um] other situations [uh] and other challenges such as [uh] as Heather indicated, Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), [um] ADHD as well, [um] all of those sorts of things were going on but there was also [um] considerable mental health challenges.

 

And this was very common [um] so this was about 60% [uh] so when I say mental health challenges I mean [um] anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, [um] quite severe challenges in terms of mental well-being.

 

What we also found was a considerable number had experienced adverse childhood experiences.

 

So from memory this was around 70% of the young people and these weren't just minor adverse childhood experiences.

 

These were quite severe, so I'm talking [um] exposure to [um], to war, to severe acts of family violence, [um] sustained deprivation, poverty, witnessing death, incarceration, family loss, terminal illness in the family, [um] abuse was very common [um], child protection orders.

 

You know these were not just [um] trivial experiences these young people had had. [Um] they were severe [um], and when you compound that with mental health problems such as for example PTSD [um] or suspected neurodiversity, you've got someone who's extremely vulnerable.

 

[Uh] and that was only compounded by their experiences of victimisation, and this was [um] sometimes [uh] experiences of victimisation in the playground.

 

This was sometimes experiences in the home environment, [um] this was sometimes online.

 

You know this was a really [um] important thing to consider, is that these young people were not the good kid gone bad.

 

They were not [uh] you know, the children of affluence and privilege, they had struggled and that struggle was really obvious um in you know when we looked at the victimisation.

 

And then of course it was made much more complex by [um] education and socialisation, so what we found in looking at that particular context is that they [um] had indications of [um] being quite [uh] socially isolated.

 

You know again, these aren't the popular kid [um] surrounded by friends, this is people that really lacked secure attachment.

 

[Um] they had few friends [um], they had issues at school so there was reports [um] from teachers and that sort of thing in indicating um inability to focus or inability to conform, or to follow instructions [um], but also over half had been subject to bullying [um] or had [uh] bullied themselves.

 

So [um] been bullies themselves I should say.

 

So what we generally found was that there were multiple intersecting vulnerabilities present in the context of the young person that overall enhanced their susceptibility to violent extremism.

[Um] so this is important right because this sort of set the scene for us understanding.

 

Okay well, why extremism?

 

And why not a gang? Why not a cult? You know these were things we had to think of is why extremism.

 

And this is what led to the next aspect which was [um] the environmental factors.

 

The environmental factors led to the Recruitment and that led [uh] to the radicalisation.

 

So with when it came to their environment [um], what we really found was that [um] the cohort and I think Heather indicated this earlier, could really be split between those associated with [um] extremist forms of Islam [uh], and those [um] affiliated with extreme right-wing [uh] views or beliefs.

 

So we did find indications that they kind of knew what the ideology or the core beliefs of the ideology were.

 

That was stronger in the data, in the extreme right [um] young people more so than the [uh] violent Salafi jihadist young people.

 

But overwhelmingly, and so if we remember right that these young people [um] are experiencing all these challenges.

 

[Um] overwhelmingly we found that there was violence in their lives.

 

And this is important right because as Heather indicated earlier when we're talking about violent extremism, we're really emphasising the endorsement, the celebration or the engagement in violence.

 

Violence is typically seem to be an abnormal thing for most of us to use as a typical measure of conflict resolution.

 

And yet with these young people, what we found was that violence was every day.

 

It was normal [uh], so that was at home and that was elsewhere as well.

 

[Um] so there were [um] substantive indications [um] of experiences of the criminal justice system and prior offences.

 

So this is stuff this is activity [um] that had been associated with them.

 

And it's quite a high number of prior offences with both the [um] violent Salafi jihadist cases but also the extreme right wing one.

 

So we knew that they were getting in trouble right [um], and that trouble was at home, in their personal lives but it was also at school.

 

And we found a high level was struggling academically, now this impacted their outlook right, because particularly those sort of towards the end of their teen years [uh], and they're getting all that um information about how to progress into adulthood.

 

And for many of these young people their outlook was bleak [uh], they weren't doing well at school, they weren't doing well at home, they weren't doing well in their personal lives [um], and so there was this [uh] I think this overall indication [uh] that their future was quite bleak.

 

And this was only compounded by the insecurity and uncertainty that pervaded their lives.

 

[Um] so when we talk about [um] life insecurity, you know, I mean to the likes of [um] [uh] limited secure attachments, [uh] high stress situations such as of course as I mentioned, terminal illness in the family such as house burning down, such as being victims of violence and abuse.

 

[Um] there was a lot going on [um] in these young people's lives, and it was overwhelming in the data as well.

 

So that they were being caught up or subject to events that were beyond their control.

 

[Um] which led us to the next [um] consideration which was okay, well how were they recruited.

 

So recruitment was kind of surprising, so what we found [uh] generally speaking with the [um] with violent Salafi jihadist young people, is that 50% were directly recruited right.

 

[Um] so this idea of oh you know they [um] were um you know [uh] recruited online by some [um] anonymous person.

 

Well no, they were directly recruited from people in their home environment, people from their social environment [um], so direct family, direct friends, travel.

 

All of these things were really important exposure points for them [um], to become involved with these [um], with these beliefs and these organisations.

 

With the extreme right, we're looking at closer to 44%[um] family and directly by organisations.

 

So the role of the online [um] network, was not as persuasive as what we otherwise would have assumed.

 

Some of them moreover were deliberately and intentionally groomed for the purpose of recruitment, and again, when we're talking about such vulnerable young people [um], it was very clear particularly in the interviews with practitioners [uh]  that they had been identified by groomers, by adult predators. that they could be manipulated, [um] and thus they were.

 

And then with some of the others, it was socialisation, these ideas, these beliefs had been in their family their entire lives.

 

Maybe Dad was a right-wing extremist, maybe [uh] their Uncle held really fundamentalist religious views.

 

It was not an unusual thing for them [uh], so there was also this unintentional dynamic where they were being socialised [um], and they and they didn't know that they were.

 

And this is something that came out of the interviews as well is that, if you were to sit down with these young people and say, “Well, why did you become an extremist?”

 

“Or how did you radicalise?

 

I wonder if they would be able to answer that [uh], because many of them seemed to [um] from the interviews with practitioners seemed to not be aware of what was going on.

 

All right, and [uh] so if we then [uh] pivot again to radicalisation, [uh] what we found there was there was really variable [um] evidence, with respect to how radicalise they might have been considered to be.

 

So some of them had really high engagement with material [um] as you can see, that's different depending on whether it was violence life of Salafi jihadist or extreme right wing.

 

Some had quite low engagement [um] but there was quite clear confluence between [um] the family context, so what was happening in the family, what the family's beliefs were [uh] and what the young person was subsequently identifying with or believing.

 

[Uh] and also that there was this [um] network that that extended beyond them [uh], so [um] overwhelmingly we did find that there was both online and offline networks in place.

 

So it was never just, okay you know, they logged on to YouTube and suddenly they're right wing extremists, that was not the case at all.

 

What [um], what it really showed was [um], unsurprisingly, young people are online, as we are right now right?

 

Being online is not in it of itself a problem [um], but what we found is that they had both online and offline engagement.

 

So sometimes it started offline and went online, sometimes it started online and went offline [um], but it's important to really emphasise that [um], that in their search for community, or in their search for belonging, in their search for secure relationships in their lives [um], that the internet itself was not the only thing that was going on.

 

There was also this online aspect there [uh] offline aspect sorry

 

[Um], so what we really found with respect to the overall question of why? Why are young people uh coming to support violent extremist organisations?

 

What we found [uh] really relates to that context that I discussed earlier, [uh] they are living insecure lives, [uh] they don't have strong attachments, [um] they're not getting the support that they need [uh] within their particular context, with [um] within families, within friendship groups, and so extremist ideologies irregardless of whether [um] they are extreme right wing extreme, left wing [uh] or violent Salafi jihadist, were offering them something that they couldn't get anywhere else.

 

It was offering them belonging, acceptance, validation.

 

The really unfortunate thing about the trials of these young people is that extremist ideology was making them feel good about themselves.

 

And I think that really highlights a problem that we experience or that we're experiencing right now particularly with young people in Australia which is this alienation [uh] from the broader society, [um] to the point that they’re having to search for belonging in extremist communities that in some ways just seek to manipulate them, to achieve goals.

And of course, because these young people came from environments where violence was so normal, [um] violence that they had received from supposed caregivers, violence that they had perpetrated, [uh] you know, that they didn't look at [um], there wasn't the evidence there that suggests that violence was an abnormal thing in their lives.

 

For many of them, violence seemed like the average Tuesday, and so when we're thinking about democratic values and we're thinking about, “oh why these young people [um] engaging in violent extremism?”

 

Well, violence in these contexts is not the abnormal thing, [uh] they are victims of violence and they are perpetrators of violence.

 

[Um], so the permissive attitude towards it [um], both in their home environment [um] or in their social environments or where it may be, was a really important consideration [uh] to have.

 

And again very much debunks that idea that these are the children of privilege and affluence, they absolutely weren't.

 

Returning to the online, offline dynamic - so we didn't identify a single pathway [uh] through recruitment, we didn't identify a single pathway towards extremism.

 

There were so many different [uh] engagement pathways that we were able to identify [uh] but, I think when we're dealing with a younger cohort what we really have to be aware of, is the fact that the internet is part of the everyday.

 

[Um] it doesn't help us [uh], to simply say, “Okay well, we just need to get them offline.”

 

Because often, offline environments were quite important to their engagement in violent extremism.

 

So we found, [um], there that that there were really free form engagement environments.

 

There was a bit of online, there was a bit of offline, friends were involved, sometimes family were involved, sometimes shadowy people online were involved, and it was really important that we kept an open mind about what [um] a young person had been through.

 

And also of course [um] highlighting, the role of both foreign networks that young people have had for whatever reason come to admire, but also the importance of family, which is that, some of them were exposed because of vectors within their family.

 

Perhaps it was an uncle, perhaps it was [um] a you know, a parent [uh], but the idea that they were radicalising in their bedroom and their family had a totally different value set, it just wasn't really supported.

 

So what we wanted to do was understand ways that we could help [um] disengage [uh] young people from violent extremism, and I'm aware that I'm at time, so what I'll just really briefly highlight with this slide [uh], is that our overall finding was that [uh]  we need to be really cautious in how we seek to understand the engagement of young people in violent extremism.

 

We cannot treat a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old [um] with lifelong stigma for a mistake they made while so young.

 

We really have to think about what comes after engagement with extremism, and if we're going to make that engagement with extremism a life sentence, then what we're really doing is making it fundamentally impossible for young people to properly disengage from violent extremism.

 

Some of the issues that they face include things such as stigma, include things such as [um] broader society and indeed even academia not understanding why they got involved with violent extremism to begin with.

 

[Um] so supporting a needs-based approach, supporting trauma informed approach and supporting [um], an approach that highlights the tolerance inherent to democratic values [um] but also supporting and showing them, that a fair and just community is one that accepts that they made mistakes [um], accepts that they've made their amends, accepts that they have engaged with programs to disengage and welcomes them back in.

 

At the end of the day, exiling young people and [um] submitting them to a lifelong rejection from their community is not going to convince them [uh] that they are welcome to that community and that they're part of it.

 

If anything, that's just going to reinforce behaviours that [uh] encourage searching for community and belonging [uh] in violent extremist milieus.

 

So, I'm aware at time and I do apologise for going over, I I hate being [um] the typical academic that can't stick to a clock, so I'm happy to clarify these points [uh]  in the questions.

 

Shaw, Rebecca 34:19

Thanks Kristy.

 

I think we're happy to open it up to the group, we do have a couple on the chat.

 

Someone was asking over what time period was the sample collected for the clients, and how many files.

 

I do believe we weren't [um] releasing that information but can you answer that partially for us Kristy.

 

Campion, Kristy

Yeah [uh], so the research period itself [um] sorry it feels like um a decade ago, it was in fact last year.

 

So I think we undertook the project between [uh] July to September, I think it was.

 

So yeah, it's quite recent [um] and of course some of the [um] outcomes of this are still in peer review as well so [um] still yet to be released.

 

Shaw, Rebecca

Okay and we've got one, was there a correlation between low SES and VE?

 

Campion, Kristy

So I'm not sure if I would call it a correlation [um], but what we did find is that with some of the young people and I apologise I can't remember the exact [um] percentage, they could be described as living quite close to the poverty line.

 

[Uh] now, that's not all of them but it certainly was [um] a considerable number of them.

 

Some of them as well sort of just building on the low SES aspect [um] had also[um], had experiences that could have [uh], resulted in their removal from the family home [uh], if an intervention had been conducted by another department and perhaps sooner.

 

Um so yeah, but some of them, those who had [uh], been removed from the home at one point were often later returned to the home as well.

 

[Um] again, before their engagement [uh], with this with this program, so considerable indications of [um] of [uh], I guess relative deprivation I suppose you could call it.

 

Shaw, Rebecca

Okay, and anecdotally, the echo chamber effect associated with social media.

 

So the ability for a small proportion of people to create a community without [um] the moderating balancing effects of their views being in the minority in the general community is often cited, was there any support for this from your research?

 

Yeah, that was a mouthful. [laughter]

 

Campion, Kristy

I appreciate it [uh] so great question, and definitely something that [um] that I'm happy to talk to.

 

So generally speaking, [uh] with the echo chamber what we actually found wasn't so much [um] engagement with an extremist echo chamber necessarily, but actually immersion in an extremist ecosystem.

 

[Um] so this is where it wasn't necessarily a fact of [um] their only engagement is online, they're going online and they're just being inundated with its extremist material [um] and they in turn [um] [uh] you know, reposting, retweeting, re-sharing whatever the case may be, we didn't find that.

 

[Um] so what we did find was that[um], that there you know where there was engagement online [uh], there were again anecdotally instances of young people um being involved in spaces that weren't actually extreme, [um] or would be what I would consider to be extremism adjacent.

 

[Uh] sometimes they did [uh] create and lead their own extremist community online as well, that was very rare [uh], but more often than not, what we identified was [uh] extremism in the family or in the social [uh] in the social group [uh], or [um] proximity shall we say to [um], to extremist cells within their immediate offline environment.

 

[Um] and that in turn led to that online curiosity but also there were occasions where we did see, “okay this person [um] was online”, [um] this was a lot rarer, they were online, they were [um] engaging with this person online but then they met them offline, and they immediately took the relationship offline as well.

 

[Um], so the idea of the echo chamber [uh] didn't really manifest within our research, it was much more complex than that.

 

It was much more about the immersion in an ecosystem rather than simply they're online and they're hearing the same thing from everyone.

 

Shaw, Rebecca

Thanks Kristy.

 

And Tamara, did you have a camera, [uh] Tamara did you have a question for Kristy?

 

Tamara

Yes I did, sorry it was a bit too complicated to write it in the chat.

 

[Um] I just wanted to know just [um] thoughts around in a school based setting [um] when we hear we don't want to tell young people what to think, what to read, what to believe in, [um] but if we are hearing students voicing for example extreme right wing [um] views and beliefs [um] publicly willy-nilly out in the school playground [um] and when we discuss those beliefs with them in a way that suggests that in our school setting we need to respect all people that come.

 

And we want to value everybody's beliefs, but the students feel that they're being shut down, and they're being prevented from having an opinion – “How can as a school we provide [um] you know, some strategies or systems for students to feel that they're being heard, that there's someone that they can talk to and talk about their views in a safe way?”

 

…”[um] that also helps them to understand how to interact with others and how to [um] respect that there will be differing opinions [um] and you know, when do we sort of get nervous or worried about how much [uh] these views are being sort of spoken about in in our settings, and in our [um] classrooms and playgrounds that maybe causing offence, or even generating some fear [um] that something worse could happen from this student?”

 

Campion, Kristy

Yeah, I appreciate that that's [uh] a really [uh] really difficult challenge that many people in the education system are currently facing and [uh], and I'm very aware as well of [um] the unpredictability of it – “When do we know if a young person is just [uh] saying things to get attention [um], in order to galvanise some sort of response, or when there is a genuine violent threat there?”

 

That that is a really tricky thing [uh] to identify, and I'm not sure I've got [uh]  the best answer for you there.

 

[Um] in regards to the first part of the question, how do we manage or how do we handle young people [um] and promote that sort of [uh] pluralism, or you know tolerance of other people's beliefs without them feeling [uh] attacked or shut down?

 

[Uh] not to not to [um] pass the buck here, but I do think the best people to talk to about that is Step Together with Heather and her team [uh], because this is the sort of conversation they had have all day, every day.

 

And [um], I think it can and does vary based on both the ideology and also the young person, but what I would suggest [uh], and this is just sort of off the back of our research, is when there is a young person that is showing those sorts of behaviours or saying that that sort of [um] [uh] that those sorts of things.

 

It always is important to consider ‘why’, [um], so what is actually going on in that young person's life?

 

Because one of [um] one of the cases we looked at, it was quite clear that young person [um] who was seemingly advocating Neo-Nazi ideology, had very little understanding of Neo-Nazi ideology.

 

[Um], but what they were actually experiencing was that they were subject to such [um] such challenging, personal circumstances as the victim of abuse, that they were just terrified of being bullied at school.

 

And so the adoption of the Neo Nazi persona, was in that instance [um] identified as a way that they were trying to protect themselves [um] so it's never [uh], as simple as what as what we hope it would be, [um] because in this particular case, this young person honestly I doubt they could have picked a neo Nazi out of a lineup [um], and yet they were walking around telling everyone they're a neo Nazi because they thought, “well, if I'm big and I'm scary and I'm tough, no one will mess with me and then maybe school is the one place where I’m not going to have to put up with [uh] being treated poorly.”

 

[um] So that's just one example, but [uh] one of the things I would encourage is really [um] finding out what's going on with them at home, [uh] because these beliefs are often connected with that sort of context.

 

[um], I I don't think [um] it's necessarily a case of them [uh] being [uh] born evil so to speak.

 

[um], when to get nervous, [uh] that is really [um] challenging [um], a challenging question, [uh] you know, at what point do we intervene?

 

And again, I think engaging with the Step Together program is I think, the first step in planning [um] the appropriate management strategy.

 

I think confronting young people and saying, “well, you can't believe this or you can't do that” [um], is not going to be [um] met with a positive reception, and may actually harden their position as well.

 

So working with um ESP and their team, and getting that better understanding about what's happening in that young person's life, uh those are the best ways to inform a management strategy for that young person.

 

[um] But the really tricky thing is doing it in such a way as that they're not feeling like they've been labelled as the bad kid, [um] that they're hopeless and that they're irredeemable, [uh] because I think that sort of [um] stigmatisation will actually [um] will actually [uh] firm up their engagement with that extremist [uh] community.

 

So sorry, there's no easy answer to that one.

 

Shaw, Rebecca

Thank you so much Kristy.

 

We are sort of at time and I do notice there's a couple of [um] other really good questions here that, if you don't mind Kristy I might throw to you after the fact and get back to [um], the people [um] [um] as soon as possible if that's okay.

[um] Because I would like to just put up a last slide with some contact details so that if you do have further questions you can.

 

So Kristy if you want to just [um] stop sharing for a second, I'll just wrap up for

everyone.

 

Campion, Kristy

Sorry I thought I already was no longer sharing.

 

Shaw, Rebecca

My bad, [um] okay.

 

Oh I've gone to the beginning sorry guys.

 

[um] Yeah so obviously that's a wrap for today.

 

 [um] Thank you once again to everyone for joining us.

 

[um] If you would like to know more about our ESU programs, please do see our website listed here.

 

 [um] Community engagement and sharing knowledge and education obviously plays a really important role in preventing and countering violent extremism.

 

We can present on violent extremism and our programs right across New South Wales, so if you do see an opportunity for us to present please do reach out to myself [um] also listed on this slide.

[um] What we're seeing throughout all parts of New South Wales is vulnerable people and especially vulnerable youth and so we all do need to work together for the shared goal of community safety.