What is Safe Digital City?

With our digital partners – ‘Common Consultancy’ and ‘Analyse & Tal’ – we are analyzing the public conversations online both on a local and national scale, to identify who the hatred is targeting, what themes that are polarizing the conversations online, and what events triggers the hate.

The aim is to give local professionals and municipalities a deeper understanding of the problem in their city and to give them new tools to strengthen their digital prevention work locally and to safeguard their residents from harmfull content online – ultimately creating a safer digital democracy.

In 2024 we are roling out digital prevention initiatives, including digital volunteer programs, digital safety-teams and a moderation tool called Edda. These are the amongst the initiatives being piloted by 8 member cities in Nordic Safe Cities who are leading the way for local digital prevention.

Why do we need a Safe Digital City?

Social media platforms have become spaces where threats, hate speech and extremism are thriving.

Extremist groups have centered their recruitment efforts and misinformation campaigns on the same social media platforms that have become part of our everyday lives. This has prompted Intelligence services from across the Nordics to accentuate the importance of preventing the spread of misinformation, radicalization and extremism online.

This development is problematic for municipalities and local security workers, as it is still difficult to form an accurate picture of how hatred, extremism, and racism travels online and into the physical streets, communities and areas of a city.

Facing these challenges requires a systematic understanding of why, where, and how the local hate is formed and spread online. When such an understanding does not exist, local actors are often forced to act in the dark – or only after hatred has taken root in the physical environment.

In Nordic Safe Cities we want to change that. That is why we have initiated ‘Safe Digital City’.

Kristiansand

Based on 3 analyses and the Safe Digital City program, Kristiansand has politically approved an digital action plan that sets the direction for their digital prevention work in the years to come.

The plan focuses on:

  1. Systematic collection of challenges on social media
  2. Digital education and prevention in schools
  3. Digital outreach work
  4. A healthy political debate
  5. Democracy bystander-support in digital spaces

Bodø

May, 2024:

In this analysis, we have examined the trends on Instagram and TikTok among youth in the city of Bodø with a special focus on which groups that are the most exposed, and what the risk areas are.

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National Analysis Norway

April, 2023:

With the national analysis on Norway, we want to contribute to finding create a safer digital democracy in Norway. We find new methods to prevent and counteract hate speech on the internet and create a strong and good culture of expression online.

In this analysis, we have examined the prevailing trends of the public conversation on Facebook. We have looked at the exact extent to which linguistic attacks take up space online, who they are directed at, and where they can be found.

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Aalborg

Juni, 2023:

With Safe Digital City Aalborg, we have for the first time been able to investigate Aalborg’s democratic conversation on the social media, and examine what creates positive communities and security online, and what polarizes and creates conflicts and harm.

The concept strengthens existing prevention work in Aalborg municipality and outlines the concepts Aalborg municipality will work on in the coming time, including a digital volunteer network, a set of moderation principles and a digital prevention team.

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Malmö

October, 2022:

Can the municipality, the Police and civil society jointly get better at understanding and preventing online hate by mapping it?

That was the basic question that the parties asked themselves when developing a groundbreaking local analysis of online harms. We found answers to who the online hate targets, who is most at risk, where it exists and how online hate is connected to incidents in the physical space of Malmö.

The report also outlines the three new initiatives for a safer digital city that Malmö is now working on implementing.

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Odense

To ensure a safer democratic online debate in Odense, we have conducted the following three analyses and will publish a report with recommendation of 4 concrete prevention initiatives in spring of 2025.

The analyses are:

  • The  Broader Public Debate
  • Young People’s Experience of and Exposure on Social Media
  • High-Risk Subcultures on Telegram