International Marketing students at the Universidad Europea signed up in late November for the Peer to Peer Challenging Extremism competition, an initiative aimed at university students around the world to raise awareness and combat hate speech on social networks, organized by the US State Department in partnership with Facebook.
Among other activities, students implement awareness-raising campaigns by creating content, in the form of videos and texts, on subjects relating to extremism, racism and hate. They will also respond to situations where false evidence or unfounded opinions go viral on news feeds or news-sharing websites. Later, online metrics will be used to measure the effectiveness and success of the projects.
The projects will be evaluated at regional and international level and those accepted will receive $2,000 in funding from the organizers and $500 from the partner, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s social network wants to leverage the ideas of millennials and university students to find the best way to minimize fake news and hate speech. The participation of the International Marketing students is coordinated by professor Fernando Doral, who expects to take students from other Communication or International Relations degree subjects.