Campaign toolkit/Innovation Hub

Communications & Campaigns

For over a decade, ISD has been at the forefront of combining credible voices with tech and communications support in order to scale-up successful counter-narrative creation and dissemination.

Our programmes seek to innovate and build the infrastructure to empower civic response to the ever more sophisticated communications machineries of those that seek to divide.

Our work seeks to understand and respond to the ways in which extremists use the Internet, social media and new technologies to spread propaganda. Through this work, we build the capacity of frontline practitioners and grassroots networks to counter the messaging of extremists, providing data insights, training and ad-tech marketing and communications support.

By working with civil society actors and credible voices, we empower them to disrupt and undermine extremist messaging online, sustaining a cycle of innovation and learning.

The Campaign Toolkit is first and foremost a free resource for individuals and organisations eager to learn more about online and offline campaigning for social good and community cohesion. The toolkit offers a wide range of resources on campaign development, how to best leverage ad grants from the GIFCT platforms to increase visibility of campaigns, and how to measure and evaluate impact.

The interactive toolkit designed to guide users through a comprehensive but accessible campaign development and delivery process. This involves three distinct steps:

Plan: users are guided through the process of campaign strategy development, including identifying a theme and the audience they want to reach
Produce: users are guided through important decisions around types of content and distribution methods, while being reminded to always think about their campaign objectives
Promote: the final step supports users in the deployment and amplification of their campaigns.

A showcase of best practices
To inspire others, the Campaign Toolkit also highlights historic and existing best practice examples of social good campaigns. Examples included in the toolkit span the globe and range from online to offline activities, from campaigns countering specific neo-Nazi ideology to those addressing broader hate speech, from video content to text-based campaigns, and more. Users can also submit their campaigns to be showcased.

ISD’s Innovation Hub is designed to connect and grow networks of credible voices online in order to scale-up counter-narrative creation and dissemination globally. The Innovation Hub is built around partnerships and collaborations, allowing the right expertise and tools to be applied appropriately across a spectrum of counter-narrative and counter-speech content.

We work with and support local partners across the world to develop these data-driven campaigns. Rather than creating one-off research and community programmes, we focus on creating replicable models based on potential scale and impact. The Innovation Hub ensures that the cycle of learning and action builds scale and impact for those in the trenches of the battle of ideas.

Introducing the Campaign Toolkit, Paris, France, 2019

Latest Communications & Campaigns Publications

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ISD’s Communications and Campaigns team

Zahed Amanullah

Resident Senior Fellow, Networks & Outreach

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Zahed Amanullah is a Resident Senior Fellow at ISD, leading on ISD’s civil society engagement, communications, and partnerships, coordinating the public and private sectors with activists, frontline workers, and relevant civil society networks. He has worked closely with Google.org to support British and European civil society organisations through the Innovation Fund, the Shared Endeavour Fund, and the Google Impact Challenge on Safety. He has given testimony to the UK and European parliaments and has been featured at the BBC, NPR, Channel 4, Sky News, the Guardian, CNN International, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Newsweek, among others. He has co-authored the ISD reports The Impact of Counternarratives, Between Two Extremes: Responding to Islamist and tribalist messaging online in Kenya during the 2017 elections, and The Innovation Fund to Counter Hate and Extremism in the UK. He holds a BS from the University of California, Berkeley and a Diploma in Management from the University of Bath.

Kelsey Bjornsgaard

Director of Practice, Strong Cities Network

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Kelsey Bjornsgaard is the Director of Practice for the Strong Cities Network where she develops training models and resources to enhance locally-led approaches to preventing and countering violent extremism. She works closely with youth, civil society and national and local government actors to identify good practice, build critical capacities and drive cross-sectoral coordination to promote community-based solutions on a global scale. Kelsey leads the delivery of Strong Cities’ youth pillar, Young Cities, and is driving work on National Local Cooperation. Kelsey holds a Master's in International Conflict Studies from King’s College London and a Bachelor's in European Studies from the University of Oklahoma.

Jennie King

Director of Climate Research and Policy

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Jennie King is the Director of Climate Research and Policy, leading efforts to translate ISD's digital research into frontline programming and response. Through ISD, she helped found Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a coalition of over 50 organisations working to identify, analyse and counter climate disinformation worldwide. She has spearheaded investigations on climate denialism and ‘discourses of delay’ in the contexts of Australia, Canada, Central Europe, Germany, South Africa, the US and UK, as well as co-authored a number of ISD’s flagship reports on this issue. Jennie also helped design, and currently manages, the COP Intelligence Units on behalf of CAAD, leading over 15 partners to produce real-time monitoring of mis- and disinformation around climate summits.

Charlotte Moeyens

Senior Manager, Networks & Civic Action

Charlotte Moeyens is a Senior Manager, Networks & Civic Action, at ISD, sitting in the central Resources and Methods team to support with the collation and distribution of counter-extremism best practice, overseeing the development and international delivery of training modules, materials and resources for practitioners and civil society. She has supported the delivery of the Google.org Impact Challenge on Safety in Europe, Africa Online Safety Fund and Mayor of London’s Shared Endeavour Fund. Most recently, she is working with the McCain Institute to develop and build the capacity of a US Prevention and Intervention Practitioners Network. Charlotte also forms part of the Strong Cities Network's (SCN) Central Management Unit, and is co-author of the SCN's Multi-Agency Models for Preventing Violent Extremism: A Guidebook for Bangladesh, as well as ISD reports YouthCAN: The Many States of Activism and Women, Girls and Islamist Extremism.