RIT has received a federal grant to expand a social media campaign aimed at combating extremist rhetoric in various online sites and social media.
News about the $149,000 grant comes from New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter. It follows up on a global competition won by a group of RIT students last year, with a campaign they call "It's Time: Ex-Out Extremism."
The competition was sponsored in part by the U.S. State Department as a way of countering hateful extremist rhetoric, by groups like ISIS and others.
The students involved in the competition have graduated now, but they are hoping to expand the reach of their initial effort.
Olivia Hauck is the CEO of the group, and believes they have had some success with the social media campaign.
“ISIL has a really strong presence, especially on sites like Facebook and Twitter and they recruit using those platforms so what we wanted to do was create a counter-narrative,” she told WXXI News.
Hauck says the Ex-Out Extremism group is hoping create more materials and other resources that teachers can use in the classroom.
“What we want to do is create materials that can support those programs so that teachers can run those in their classes independently. And then we’re also looking into the possibility of developing a mobile app that can also be used to support that."
