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

The process of informatisation of extremist activity is becoming a serious challenge to international security, which leads to increase in the negative effect spreading of radical and violent ideas in political struggle. UN calls all actors to search of effective methods of counteracting extremist activity, which should provide comprehensive communication in order to build trust between various social institutions and networks. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization engages in resisting extremism as key areas of activity, and the policy in the field of countering extremism has received separate legal support. The SCO offers a preventive approach to resist extremism: the use of the media and the Internet as a tool for propaganda against extremist ideas, promoting patriotic ideas and educating young people. In this context, the authors of the study applied the methods of the case approach to assess the quality and effectiveness of the Shanghai policy to counter extremism activity. Using a comparative analysis of the quantitative data SEO metrics of the SCO's resources on the Internet and social networks. The study showed that today, the SCO’s anti-extremist activities have not been able to go beyond declarative settings. The Organization’s activity on the Internet and social networks is limited to a purely informative one, and the number of subscribers, the content and the frequency of updating the content cannot have any noticeable positive agenda or counter-narratives effect. The SCO youth policy as an element of counter-extremist activity has similar shortcomings listed above.

The SCO, youth extremism, antiextremism, informatization, digitalization, youth policy, effectiveness of international institutions, analyses of SEO data, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, international security