CounteR – an innovative tool for detecting radical content online

30 April 2024 marks the formal completion of the CounteR Project – Countering radicalisation for a safer world: privacy-first situational awareness platform for violent terrorism and crime prediction, counter radicalisation, and citizen protection.

The project’s most significant achievement is the Counter Platform: an innovative early-warning tool to detect radical content online. Operational in 12 languages, the CounteR Platform can: perform proactive content monitoring across platforms and sited on the open, deep and dark webs; detect and moderate radical content, extremist ideologies and hate speech; and analyse text and images. The CounteR Platform helps law-enforcement agencies, internet providers and social media platforms identify threats and tackle radicalisation.

“Unlike tools that only focus on one form of extremism, CounteR detects content across a variety of radicalisation domains, including jihadism and extremist ideologies. This ensures a comprehensive and holistic approach to monitoring and combating radical content online. The Platform is definitely not the only project result. The multidisciplinary team of CounteR is also proud with the valuable research findings, produced within the project that helped tremendously for understanding the psychological and sociological dynamics of radicalisation”, CounteR’s project coordinator Cătălin Trufin from ASSIST Software commented.

ASSIST Software represents Romania in the CounteR consortium, which includes a total of 18 reputable organisations across 11 member states.

“Data science specialists analysed vast datasets to uncover patterns and trends. Utilising advanced algorithms, project experts developed sophisticated tools to detect and predict indicators of radicalisation. Through SNA methodologies, our experts enabled the identification of radicalisation hotspots, key nodes and communities within these networks”, shared Adrian Onu, the project’s technical coordinator from ASSIST Software.