Need to have counter-narrative to online extremism: Experts

There is a urgent need to devise counter-narrative to combat the narrative of terror over social media and other other online forums, officials and experts from various countries gathered here for a conference said.
Addressing India's flagship geo-political initiative "Raisina Dialogue" on the topic 'Reclaiming the Digital: Countering Violent Extremism Online', Commander of Joint Forces Command in UK Gen Sir Chris Deverell said his country works with various social media platforms to counter these issues even as they continuously build up their cyber defence and resilience.
He added there was an urgent sneed to put counter- narrative to combat the narrative of terror over various online mediums.

"We look at making sure that there is no terrorist content on our platform. We have put in various mechanisms to flag such a content," Ankhi Das, Facebook Director (Public Policy) for India, South and Central Asia said while participating in the event.
Deputy Director, Department of State in the US, Irfan Saeed said all stakeholders, countries and law-enforcement agencies will have to undertake a "holistic approach" to tackle the issue and such measures cannot "solely" be online but also on the real ground.
"I think we need better marketing for these subjects... the Daesh (ISIS) has much better marketing than what we do," Saeed said, adding it is not about the content all the time but about dissemination of the subject as well.

While taking a question from the audience during the session, Saeed while accepted that Dabiq, the propoganda magazine brought out by the ISIS, was a well brought out collection, it was a challenge for the world to effectively counter its contents that work to radicalise the youth.
Das added Facebook has set standards to differentiate what is a terrorist and non-terrorist content and added these subjects were pretty objective in their charter.