The Extremism Research & Intervention Studio (ERIS) is home to PERIL’s work in the world of online communication. The ERIS team is responsible for maintaining PERIL’s deep knowledge of online cultures, mapping narratives and rhetoric of extremist and conspiracy theory spaces, and informing PERIL’s primary research and monitoring strategies. As PERIL’s design studio, ERIS houses PERIL’s groundbreaking work in video-based (attitudinal inoculation) and ongoing work disseminating these tools and techniques to local communities. ERIS is home to ongoing projects with government, private, and nonprofit partners including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jigsaw, the Department of Homeland Security, and more.
To build, test, and share innovative, scalable digital tools that build resilience to extremism online
To develop evidence-based, non-securitized approaches to the challenges of online safety
To envision a future in which digital media serve the interests of community safety, inclusive social cohesion, and democratic resilience
As part of its ongoing partnership with Jigsaw LLC, ERIS is contributing cutting-edge work to understand and intervene against online mis- and disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. This recently included a groundbreaking study into the so-called “blanket of protection” effect. The blanket of protection theory is based on the observation that people who have been educated to recognize one form of manipulative or harmful online content will be better able to recognize and resist other forms of manipulative and harmful content. That is, education against one form of propaganda may “blanket” audiences with protection against other forms of propaganda. This is an exciting possibility, which promises greater scalability in prevention and resilience education. This study demonstrated that education messages which addressed techniques of racist propaganda also helped audiences recognize and resist misogynistic propaganda and antisemitic propaganda. The study also demonstrated that an education message against the more general propaganda technique of cherry-picking data helped audiences recognize and resist racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic forms of propaganda. Research and analysis is ongoing, with additional investigation and real-world rollout to come.
In partnership with the Bertelsmann Foundation, PERIL created an 11-minute animated video to educate audiences about disinformation and anti-government extremism. This project is part of the non-partisan Bertelsmann Foundation’s democracy-strengthening work and tells the fictionalized story of a man who gets radicalized into a ‘boogaloo’ violent anti-government scene during the COVID-19 shutdown. The video was paired with an educational toolkit and was assessed through an impact study with over 500 participants. Watch the video here, and learn more about the project and the evidence of effectiveness documented in our impact study.
Violent Extremism Education and Resilience is a train-the-trainers program, funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s 2023 Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention grant cycle. VEER connects organizations working in the space of community resilience with the tools and training necessary to stand up community-led, community-servicing prevention education. VEER is based around a web portal, launching November 2023, which offers self-guided training modules on the topics of leading community dialogue, developing attitudinal inoculation messages, and using video and digital media to reach audiences locally and beyond.
DUCC (Developing and Using Critical Comprehension) is an initiative that combines social-emotional learning and digital literacy to foster critical and independent thinking in students grades K-5. An ongoing initiative, DUCC is creating a comprehensive curriculum, including lesson plans, animated videos, and activities for educators across the nation.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, ERIS worked with partners in government, academia, and healthcare, to understand and interrupt the adoption of anti-vaccine and COVID-denialist misinformation and conspiracy theories. This work included narrative and rhetoric mapping in the English and French-speaking worlds, as well as attitudinal inoculation videos, which “prebunked” common anti-vaccine tropes.
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