The Evaluation of Effectiveness of Youth Extremism Countering Policy of Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Context of Informatisation and Digitalisation Processes

Borisov Denis Alekseevich PhD in History Associate Professor, Department of World Economy, International Relations and Law, Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management 630099, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Shamshin Family str., 26/1, office 131 denisborisov@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Safarov Asliddin Mukomovich ORCID: 0000-0001-5325-7203 Senior Lecturer, Department of World Economy, International Relations and Law, Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management 630099, Russia, Novosibirsk Region, Kamenskaya str., 52/1, office 205 a.m.safarov@nsuem.ru

Goryacheva Arina Igorevna ORCID: 0009-0007-3445-718X Assistant, Department of World Economy, International Relations and Law, Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management 630099, Russia, Novosibirsk, Kamenskaya str., 52/1, office 205 a.i.goryacheva@nsuem.ru

Setting the problem at the international security level

Recently, the efforts of the international community in the fight against terrorism and extremism have been increasingly concentrated around the problem of radicalization of public consciousness, which is motivated by the activities of various extremist groups in the modern information space ^{[1, pp. 103-104]}. The UN, as the main platform for coordinating the actions of the international community, records in its documents that the availability of extremist content on the Internet is a significant factor in the glorification and propaganda of terrorism as one of the tactics of political struggle, and this process also forms a social support base for terrorists in many countries of the world, including outside the immediate zone of their activities^[1]. A significant factor in the fight against extremist activity is the comprehensive nature of extremist ideas, which now have the opportunity to spread even in relatively prosperous societies. In this context, the most striking and obvious example is the activities of ISIS in the Middle East, whose destructive practices and information propaganda have proved that even prosperous and developed regions of the world become donors to replenish the social base of violent extremism and terrorism ^{[2, p. 23]}.

In order to neutralize the negative effects of digitalization of extremism, new formats of counteraction at the cognitive and informational level are needed to strengthen trust in the triangle "state-society-personality". It is necessary to promote the ideas of tolerance, pluralism, and friendship of peoples in the information space. It is impossible to do without the development of information literacy among the population, especially on the issues of malicious use by extremists Internet and social networks. It is important to provide wider opportunities for the participation of conventional public and religious institutions in traditional and new communication channels, covering broad segments of the population ^{[3, p. 30-31]}.

In 2015-2016, active theoretical and methodological work was carried out under the auspices of the UN in the field of countering violent extremism ^{[4, p. 55]}. The result of this work is the document "Action Plan for the prevention of violent extremism". The UN Secretary General calls on the international community to reflect on the essence of violent extremism and the most effective methods of countering this destructive phenomenon^[2]. Three messages became important points of the "Plan...". Firstly, violent extremism is defined as provocation of State institutions to excessive response actions in order to further use the insufficiently thought-out reaction of the Government for their propaganda purposes. Secondly, there are no precise statistical data to determine the factors of radicalization of social creation, but two pools of driving and retaining cause-and-effect relationships can be distinguished. Thirdly, a framework model is proposed consisting of seven directions and concrete steps to counter violent extremism, which international actors can use as a guideline when developing strategies and tactics to combat extremism.

The UN calls on the international community to more actively combat the root causes of extremist activity: uncertainty of socio-economic opportunities for young people, discrimination and marginalization of certain social groups, inefficient public administration – all these problems act as motives for the spread of extremist ideas and movements that are used by extremist organizations and activists for propaganda on social networks. In turn, the objective processes of informatization and improvisation become a catalyst for scaling up the destructive activities of extremist organizations in the youth environment.

An additional result of international reflection was the recognition of the need to share responsibility in ensuring an international regime for countering terrorism and extremism between levels and subjects. In particular, the UN proceeds from the importance of establishing and developing a consistent format of interaction between subjects at the global, regional and national levels: "Although we can set the parameters of activities at the global level, the greatest impact comes from activities at the local, national and regional levels. Therefore, I hope that the Member States will fulfill our common promise and show the political will to achieve real change and develop new public policies aimed at preventing violent extremism in their respective countries and regions."^[3] In this context, it should be noted that the regional level has a special mediation function in the interaction between the universal and national levels in the policy of countering extremist activity, where interstate cooperation at the regional level focuses on adaptation, mediation and monitoring tasks for more effective work of the international regime for the prevention of extremist activity.

Regional response

Since 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia has been promoting security approaches that are complementary to the UN. The first documents of interstate cooperation within the SCO began to pay attention to theoretical and practical cooperation in the field of countering extremism. In the period from 2001 to 2004, a regulatory and institutional foundation was formed in the field of combating new threats and challenges to regional security. The problem of extremism has received special attention on the agenda of Shanghai diplomacy. Article 17 of the SCO Charter fixed in the Organization's functionality the need for prevention and propaganda against extremist activities^[4]. The SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure has become a direct body whose competence includes the tasks of coordinating interstate cooperation in the field of anti-extremist activities, and the SCO RATS website is considered as an element of propaganda activities in the field of combating terrorism, separatism and extremism^[5].

An analysis of the SCO's activities shows that this Organization regularly checks its security policy, its theoretical and practical aspects, with the regulatory and conceptual recommendations of the UN ^{[5, p. 60]}. Thus, the first campaigns to counter extremism within the framework of the Shanghai process were considered exclusively in the context of the anti-terrorist struggle in the triangle: terrorism, separatism, extremism. However, by 2017, following the development of the UN anti-terrorist and anti-extremist discourse, the adoption of the SCO Convention on Countering Extremism highlights anti-extremist activity as a separate area of security policy^[6]. This document highlights potential areas for creating measures to counter extremism. Based on the objectives of our study, we can formulate two SCO directions for countering the spread of extremist activity on the Web:

1. A reactionary approach, which is characterized by the following areas of activity: improving legislation and the competence of law enforcement agencies, strengthening border control, restricting access to prohibited materials, protecting victims and witnesses.

2. The preventive approach is revealed through: interaction with international and regional organizations, strengthening propaganda activities, monitoring the media, strengthening educational work, conducting research.

In general, of the 11 announced anti–extremist activities, 6 are in one way or another devoted to the power component, the rest are aimed at broad involvement of the public in the fight against the spread of extremism. The first approach can be objectively implemented only through national law enforcement structures, which will require lengthy coordination procedures and interdepartmental interaction from the SCO ^{[6, p. 34]}. However, the second approach potentially has broader opportunities for establishing interregional cooperation "here and now" among various actors of the member countries in the information and cognitive counteraction of extremist ideas on the Internet. This is relevant for working in the youth environment through the promotion of anti-extremist activities and the education of the younger generation, which will be able to consciously resist the forces of extremism. Especially promising is working with the youth of the region through social networks and project work, which fully meets the UN's request in the field of countering extremism.

Moreover, the SCO's preventive approach is synonymous with the position of the expert community in the field of youth psychology, which indicate that information and psychological counteraction to the spread of the ideology of extremism in the youth environment is of particular importance, since it is young people under 30 who, being active participants in social interaction through new channels of information dissemination, are most susceptible to negative influence ^{[7, p.16; 8, pp. 37-38]}. It is the mass media that have a huge psychological impact on the audience, encouraging concrete actions through the transmission of stereotypes and behaviors, needs, attitudes, value orientations. This process turns out to be the strongest in relation to young people, the media, especially the Internet, actually construct an image of the world for the younger generation.

Problems of performance evaluation

So, in 2018, the SCO heads of state issued a joint appeal to young people. The document, on the one hand, states that on the territory of the SCO member states, a number of representatives of the younger generation, due to various external and internal factors, being subjected to massive informational, ideological and psychological influence, the imposition of alien values and false religious beliefs, also find themselves involved in terrorist, separatist and extremist activities. On the other hand, it is emphasized that in order to effectively repel threats, close cooperation within the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure is important, as well as the use of the potential of public structures, the media, religious communities, educational and scientific institutions of the SCO member states ^[7]. Further in 2020, the SCO issued a separate statement on countering the spread of terrorist, separatist and extremist ideology, including on the Internet, which explicitly stated the need for common approaches and intensification of work to eliminate the possibilities of spreading terrorist ideology on the Internet^[8].

There is an objective need to assess the effectiveness of the approaches of various international institutions involved in countering extremist activity, including in the context of countering the negative consequences of informatization of extremism ^{[9, p. 245]}. It is logical to assume that countering radical extremist ideas on the web should be carried out with the help of appropriate information resources and network projects, primarily among young people. In this context, the SCO information resources in The Internet and social networks, as well as network projects for interaction with young people can be considered as key mechanisms for countering the spread of extremist activity in the information space ^{[10, pp. 177-179]}. As a starting methodological point, we propose to use a situational approach, in particular, methods of quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis based on SEO data and metrics of official information resources of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on the Internet and social networks. It is important to clarify that this technique is applicable only for research in the area of the international segment of the Internet, while this technique is not suitable for analyzing the information space of the PRC due to the specifics of the organization of the Chinese segment of the Internet.

Our analysis is based on data from the information services "Alexa", "SimilarWeb" and "Rating Mail.ru ", which record user activity on various Internet resources, including those related to the activities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The authors conduct quantitative and qualitative analysis of data on attendance, duration of work, geography of users, issuance of popular search queries, positions in the global ranking on the websites of the SCO secretariat, SCO RATS and pages in social networks: Facebook ("FB"); Vkontakte ("VK"); Twitter ("T"). Additionally, the effectiveness of countering extremism among young people on the Internet under the auspices of the SCO is considered as an element of situational analysis using data and tools of Google and Yandex search engines.

SCO's anti-extremist activity in the information space

The main indicators of SEO data and metrics of the official website of the SCO RATS www.ecrats.org they reveal its low traffic: the average number of pages viewed from the site is 1.7 per user; the average time spent on the site is 2 minutes 28 seconds; the failure rate (when the user closes the site after opening it for a few seconds) is slightly more than 50%^[9]. It is interesting to note that the main geographical locations of users that make up the traffic of the SCO RATS website account for only 2 states (out of 8 SCO members) – Russia and India, with a clear dominance of visitors from India – 66% of all visits. In this context, the absence of the PRC is most likely a feature of the Chinese segment of the World Wide Web, which stands alone and cannot be taken into account in Internet statistics. Indian interest is obviously due to the recent acquisition of the status of a permanent member of the SCO and the increased interest in the organization on the part of the Indian expert community.

Further, if we analyze the results of the most popular search queries issued in the online search engines Google and Yandex (shows what key words people are looking for any information on SCO), the most popular request is 69% "rats sco", which suggests that most of the visitors were interested in General information about the Organization. Of the 10 most popular queries, the only highly specialized pattern "scohq" with 0.06% can be noted^[10]. The search results did not reveal any special requests related to the SCO RATS and anti-extremist activities or any projects of the Organization in this area. The main list of requests looks like this: "rats sco"; "sco", "The Shanghai cooperation organization website". In addition, it should be noted that the rating of the SCO RATS website is at a very low level – 2,914,147 place according to Alexa, while the OSCE website has a rating of 57,262.

For comparison, the key user requests for the OSCE were distributed as follows: "osce" - 22.9%, "Armenia election" – 3.43%, "osce jobs" – 3.08%, "hate crime" – 1.3% – these Internet statistics indicate a more narrowly professional interest of users, where the Internet audience demonstrates a large awareness of certain areas of activity and projects in the field of new OSCE security^[11].

Next, it is necessary to assess the SCO's activity in new media (social networks), which annually increase their presence in the information space, crowding traditional media. Continuing the study of information activity, we took the following pages in the SCO social networks: Twitter, Facebook, and Vkontakte. The first important observation is that there is no information on the presence of the Organization in social networks on the official website of the SCO RATS. The content content of the pages in the new media bypasses the problems of anti-extremist and anti-terrorist activities.

SEO information from the official pages of the SCO confirms the lack of practical actions in the field of information counteraction to extremist ideology and propaganda: the average duration of the visit is 6 minutes and 20 seconds; the average number of pages of the visit is 3.46; 30% of visits are made by Russian users, 12% by the PRC, 10% by the USA^[12]. The content of the official SCO group on Facebook repeats the specifics of the above-mentioned information resources: mainly the informational and notification nature of messages, there are no propaganda or educational materials in the context of the fight against extremism. Additionally, we can note a very low number of subscribers to SCO resources in social networks: "the number of users involved in the "FB" – 839 people; "VK" – 213 users. For comparison, we can cite data on the number of users involved in the OSCE's "FB" – 108,360 users^[13].  

A serious gap in the information work of the SCO Secretariat is observed in the social network "Twitter", which specializes mainly in the professional and expert community. The search for patterns related to the Organization (#sco; #ratsshos) does not give any results. At the same time, the OSCE has representation in the "T", active information work is noticeable, a large number of involved users – 11,200 people^[14].

In the anti–extremist activity of the Organization, a separate direction is gradually being singled out - this is informational and practical work with the youth audience through the organization of an interstate youth dialogue within the framework of the Youth Council^[15]. Internet statistics show that so far this institution has not become a noticeable element in the SCO's counter-extremism policy. Practical work with youth remains episodic, it is not possible to organize systematic work through modern channels of information transmission and communication, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of implemented youth projects ^{[11, p. 75]}.

For example, the Youth Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as the main Shanghai institute for youth work, has extremely low activity in the information space. In the "Rating Mail.ru " in the category "Non-governmental organizations of the Russian Federation " website "http://yc-sco.org " it occupies the 469th place, located between the Kineshma public organization of Afghanistan Veterans and the Museum of the Russian Flag^[16]. Graphs of SEO data and metrics of the SCO Youth Council website clearly show the state and the main factors that reduce the effectiveness of the Organization's work with the youth environment.

Graph 1. CEO data and metrics of the SCO Youth Council website: attendance for the period from 2010 to 2019. (compiled with the help of the Rating service Mail.ru ". URL: https://top.mail.ru ).

Graph 2. CEO data and metrics of the SCO Youth Council website: detailed attendance for the period from 2017 to 2019. (compiled with the help of the Rating service Mail.ru ". URL: https://top.mail.ru ).

Graph 3. CEO data and metrics of the SCO Youth Council website: attendance by country (compiled with the help of the Rating service Mail.ru ". URL: https://top.mail.ru ).

 The first trend is a drop in interest in youth projects. If in 2010, against the background of novelty, the project had 2,036 visitors per month at its peak, then by 2019 the monthly audience of the information resource fell to 173 at its peak. The second is the fragmentary activity of the SCO Youth Council, whose activities have practically been reduced to one event per year: the main peaks of attendance in 2017 and 2018 occurred in May – this is the time of the annual SCO Youth Forum. The third is the geographical asymmetry in the information presence of the youth policy of the Shanghai process: there is a noticeable interest from Russian users, to a lesser extent Chinese and Kyrgyz, while Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan practically drop out. It is obvious that the Organization relies on occasional events without creating long-term ties, which negatively affects the maintenance of interest and involvement of young people in SCO projects.

It is interesting to note that along with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, users from South Korea and the United States were among the leaders in visits. A particularly large surge of visitors from the United States came to the 2nd SCO Youth Forum in 2018, which may indicate interest in youth projects from the American expert and educational community. At the same time, such modest results of the SCO information and cognitive work are probably related to the fragmented information space of the SCO member states: our research has covered the Russian-speaking and English-speaking segments of the Internet, while the Chinese part of the world information network functions autonomously in its own specific mode. Accordingly, such fragmentation in fact excludes the PRC from the united information front for countering extremist ideas.

Conclusion

The international community, under the auspices of the UN, notes the difficulty in identifying and countering modern threats associated with extremist activities, especially in the context of the development of digitalization and informatization processes. The complex multifactorial nature of the problems of extremism does not allow us to develop an effective universal response, therefore, the World Organization formulates the need for greater involvement and initiative on the part of regional and national actors in the field of international security.

Since the beginning of its operation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has included in its regulatory framework the tasks of countering extremism, and is also purposefully implementing a policy of countering extremism in the region. The SCO pays special attention to the fight against extremist manifestations in the information space and among young people. However, the scientific and expert community has not yet formed unified approaches to assess the effectiveness of anti-extremist activities both in the conditions of the traditional information environment and for the expanding information and digital space.

The authors tested the possibilities of analyzing user information on the Internet to assess the effectiveness of information work and information influence carried out by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The results of a comparative analysis of SEO data from official Internet resources associated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization reveal weaknesses in the policy of countering extremism, characterizing the Organization's activities in this area as primarily declarative and informational, without attempts to organize an active information and cognitive front to counter extremist ideology. The Secretariat pays little attention to the information support of the SCO activities, significant channels of information dissemination on the Internet are ignored.

The youth direction in the policy of countering extremist activity at the initial stage showed high interest, but in the future the SCO could not offer workable mechanisms for implementing youth policy and more involved formats of work to prevent manifestations of terrorism, extremism and separatism among young people. The existing projects implemented within the framework of the Youth Council do not allow either to maintain an appropriate level of social interactions, nor to ensure the coverage and involvement of the audience in the SCO agenda. Another important deterrent is the fragmentation of the Shanghai information space due to the specifics of the functioning of the Chinese segment of the Internet. 

In general, it is possible to fix the expansion of opportunities for analyzing the activities of international organizations by attracting Internet activity data from official websites of international institutions and Internet resources affiliated with them to the study: search query data, SEO statistics, activity in social networks, etc. - all this makes it possible to significantly expand the factual base of analytical work in the field of the study of international relations.

^[1] The UN General Assembly (2014). Report of the UN Secretary-General "Activities of the United Nations system in the implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy" dated April 14, 2014. URL: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N14/299/31/PDF/N1429931.pdf (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[2] The UN General Assembly (2015). Report of the UN Secretary-General "Action Plan for the Prevention of violent Extremism". URL:

https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/456/24/PDF/N1545624.pdf (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[3] Ibid., p. 14.

^[4] Shanghai Cooperation Organization (2002). Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. URL: http://www.kremlin.ru/supplement/3450 (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[5] The SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (2004). Report of the Council of the Regional Anti–Terrorist Structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to the Council of Heads of Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on the activities of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2004. URL: http://www.kremlin.ru/supplement/3668 (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[6] Shanghai Cooperation Organization (2017). Convention of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on Countering Extremism. URL:

http://ecrats.org/upload/iblock/349/Convention%20po%20extremism%20(Russian).pdf (accessed date:

01.09.2021).

^[7] Council of SCO Heads of State (2018). Joint appeal of the heads of the member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to the youth. URL: http://rus.sectsco.org/documents / (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[8] Council of SCO Heads of State (2020).  Statement of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on countering the spread of terrorist, separatist and extremist ideology, including on the Internet. URL: http://rus.sectsco.org/documents / (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[9] SEO metric of the SCO RATS website from 01.09.2019, compiled on the basis of data from the Alexa service. URL: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ecrats.org (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[10] Data of popular requests of the SCO RATS website from 01.09.2019, compiled on the basis of data from the Alexa service. URL: URL:https://www.alexa.com/pro/keywords/site#ecrats.org (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[11] SEO metrics and data of popular requests of the OSCE website from 01.09.2019, compiled on the basis of data from the Alexa service. URL: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/osce.org (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[12] SEO metric of the SCO website from 01.09.2019, compiled on the basis of data from the "Similarweb" service. URL: https://www.similarweb.com (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[13] Data on the number of subscribers in the social networks "Facebook" and "Vkontakte" as of 01.09.2019.

^[14] Data on the number of subscribers in the social network "Twitter" as of 01.09.2019

^[15] Shanghai Cooperation Organization (2009). Declaration on the establishment of the Youth Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization dated 04.05.2009. URL: http://yc-sco.org/?lng=ru&module=pages&action=view&id=69 (accessed: 01.09.2021).

^[16] "Rating Mail.ru (2019). SEO metric of the SCO Youth Council website from 01.09.2019, compiled on the basis of data from the Rating service Mail.ru ". URL: https://top.mail.ru/visits?id=1878187&days=30 (accessed: 01.09.2019).