Please note: This session is generously funded by Dover District Council and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government through their Community Cohesion and Resilience Fund to support our workshops to students. As such, priority will be given to those working within Dover District.
Date of session: Tuesday 1st July 2025
Time of session: 3:45pm to 5:15pm
Suitable for: Anyone working with young people aged 11+ in an educational setting within Kent County Council, including DSLs, secondary school and FE teachers, youth workers, and apprenticeship providers.
Summary: Misinformation and disinformation are important tools used by extremists to connect with and radicalise an audience. Extremists will often propagate disinformation in particular to reinforce their grievance narratives by deliberately exploiting an audience’s anger, fear, or confusion, particularly at times of heightened political or social tensions.
This was demonstrated in the violence that followed the 29 July 2024 Southport murders, and more recently in the information being circulated in the aftermath of the vehicle impact incident in Liverpool on 26 May – in both cases, online propagators of disinformation included far-right extremists seeking to leverage audience shock and moral outrage to reinforce Islamophobic and racist anti-immigration narratives.
This online briefing will use case study analysis to explore in detail how extremists employ disinformation, and how they use online platforms and emerging technology such as artificial intelligence to maximise the impact of these disinformation campaigns.
The briefing will conclude by providing some simple guidance on how teaching staff might help their students identify disinformation, and how to develop the increased media fluency that builds the resilience to the potential impact of disinformation they may encounter on the Internet or social media.
Guest Speaker: Richard Evans, Director of Candour Intelligence
Richard is the founder and Director of Candour Intelligence Ltd, an extremism knowledge organisation. He specialises in the investigation, monitoring, and exploitation of extremist and terrorist online discourse, and the study of how extremists use online platforms to propagate their narratives and radicalise their audiences.
He has over 20 years of experience supporting staff in government, defence, and law enforcement to develop an enhanced operational understanding of their extremist adversary. As Director of Candour Intelligence, Richard delivers intelligence support, education, and professional development services concerning extremist ideologies, extremist online discourse, and extremist use of social media.
Richard was formerly an Associate Director in Janes Intelligence Unit (JIU), part of Jane’s Group UK Ltd, the defence and national security information business founded in 1898. In this role he was responsible for the delivery of directed online research activities focused on observing extremist online communities and assisting the public sector in improving their understanding of extremist ideologies.
