Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Be Internet Citizens billboard in the London Underground

ISD’s core activities range from traditional research output and policy advice to the facilitation of youth and practitioner networks and the development of counternarrative and technological tools to combat extremism.[1] More recently, ISD has researched misinformation and disinformation involving climate change,[2] public health,[3] election integrity,[4] and conspiracy networks such as QAnon.[5]

ISD partners with a number of Western governments, including agencies in Canada,[6] Norway,[7] the Netherlands,[8] Germany, the United Kingdom,[9] New Zealand,[10] Australia, the United States,[11] and the European Commission.[12] It also works on funded projects with technology companies and organizations such as Google,[13] Microsoft,[14] Meta,[15] and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.[16]

Notable sources of foundation support include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,[17] the Omidyar Network,[18] the Gen Next Foundation,[19] and the Open Society Foundation.[20] Other institutional partners include the Global Disinformation Index,[21] the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society,[22] Institut Montaigne,[23] the British Council,[24] and the German Marshall Fund.[25]

Sasha Havlicek speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., with Evan Ryan, Farah Pandith and Juan Zarate, June, 2015

ISD was founded in 2006 as an extension of the Club of Three,[26] a strategic networking organization founded in 1996 by George Weidenfeld that focused on high-level engagement between Europe and the world.[27] ISD originally focused on social cohesion[28] and radicalization following a rise of far-right and Islamist extremism in Europe. ISD later hosted the Against Violent Extremism network shortly after it was founded in 2011 in Dublin, Ireland, promoting engagement with former violent extremists as a way of understanding how extremist movements work.[29]

By 2012, ISD was working with social media platforms such as YouTube to explore radicalization online,[30] including research on the use of counternarratives[31] to minimize the impact of extremist recruitment by groups such as ISIS,[32] Al Qaeda,[33] and white supremacists[34] in Europe and North America. This work later expanded to include recruitment and disruption efforts by state actors[35] and conspiracy theorists[36] during the COVID-19 pandemic.[37] Much of this activity was found to be amplified during regional and national elections,[38] leading to new research on election disruption in countries such as Germany,[39] Sweden,[40] France,[41] Italy,[42] Kenya,[43] and the United States.[44] ISD's analysis of the January 6th United States Capitol attack was chosen for inclusion in the Library of Congress.[45]

Launch of the Strong Cities Network at the United Nations General Assembly with Zeid bin Raad al Hussein, Bill de Blasio, Loretta Lynch, and Sasha Havlicek, September 2015

• Business Council for Democracy (BC4D): A joint initiative from Hertie Stiftung, Robert Bosch Stiftung, and ISD Germany, BC4D provides a business-led approach to digital literacy for adults, including employee training on hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.[46]
• Digital Policy Lab (DPL): Funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, the DPL is an intergovernmental working group focused on regulation and policy regarding disinformation, hate speech, extremism, and terrorism online.[47]
• Beam: Developed in partnership with the Centre for Analysis of Social Media[48] (CASM), Beam is a meta-project that uses tech to detect, track & measure online manipulation, disinformation, and harassment. Beam was a winner of the 2021 U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge.[49]
• Prevention Practitioner Network: Developed in partnership with the McCain Institute, the Prevention Practitioner Network is a national network of interdisciplinary professionals dedicated to preventing targeted violence, terrorism, and their impacts within the United States.[50]
• Strong Cities Network (SCN): Launched at the United Nations in September 2015,[51] SCN is a global network of mayors, municipal-level policy-makers, and practitioners seeking to build social cohesion and counter violent extremism.[52]
• Youth Civil Activism Network[53] (YouthCAN): Launched in Oslo, Norway in 2015, YouthCAN is a global youth network of counter-extremism and social justice activists.[54]
• Be Internet Citizens (BIC): Developed in partnership with Google in 2017, BIC is a digital literacy program for youth that aims to explain fake news, echo chambers, filter bubbles, and promote safety online.[55]
• Shared Endeavour Fund:[56] ISD managed an £800,000 fund, supported Google.org and the Mayor of London, to empower communities to tackle violent extremism and a rise in hate crime offences in London.[57]

ISD is also a member of the Christchurch Call advisory network[58] and the Commission for Countering Extremism's Expert Group[59] in the United Kingdom.

• Ayad, Moustafa, "The Vladimirror Network: Pro-Putin Power-Users on Facebook" (April 2022)
• O'Connor, Ciaran, "Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok" (August 2021)
• Comerford, Milo; Havlicek, Sasha, "Mainstreamed Extremism and the Future of Prevention" (September 2021)
• "Bankrolling Bigotry: An overview of the Online Funding Strategies of American Hate Groups" (October 2020)
• Miller, Carl; Smith, Melanie, Marsh, Oliver; Balint, Kata; Inskip, Chris; Visser, Francesca, "Information Warfare and Wikipedia" (October 2022)
• Ebner, Julia; Davey, Jacob (March 2018). "Mainstreaming Mussolini: How the Extreme Right Attempted to 'Make Italy Great Again' in the 2018 Italian Election" (PDF).
• Davey, Jacob; Birdwell, Jonathan; Skellett, Rebecca (February 2018). "Counter-Conversations: A model for direct engagement with individuals showing signs of radicalisation online" (PDF).
• Harrasy, Anisa; Amanullah, Zahed (February 2018). "Between Two Extremes: Responding to Islamist and tribalist messaging online in Kenya during the 2017 elections" (PDF).
• Applebaum, Anne; Pomerantsev, Peter; Smith, Melanie; Colliver, Chloe (December 2017). "Make Germany Great Again" (PDF).
• Davey, Jacob; Ebner, Julia (October 2017). "The Fringe Insurgency" (PDF).

• Official website