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2017

Rewind

2017

Extremism can be devastating to people and their communities.

 

From those radicalised to those who have lost loved-ones to violence or imprisonment, the effect of extremism has far-reaching and long-term impacts. And yet there are few online communities that can speak honestly and productively about extremism, and that use personal experiences to highlight new ways in which we can best go about tackling the problem.

 

Extremism is often thought of as religiously motivated, when in actuality, many may be drawn in through things like socio-economic hardship, family legacy, discrimination, a lack of government or social support, human rights abuses, or perhaps feeling the need to prove oneself.

 

The original concept behind the series 

A journalist interviewed guests about their experiences and views

Talk-show style graphics to introduce each episode

In 2017, ExtremeLives was developed as a talk-show broadcast live on Facebook. The show spoke to activists, former extremists, and peacebuilders about violent extremism in a candid and unedited way. The aim was to highlight the wealth of knowledge at local levels and promote unheard voices to the digital development community.

 

The series hoped to attract an audience of those affected by extremism directly to show that there were peaceful alternatives to violence and/or support available to them. It would also dispel some of the common myths around extremism for a casual viewer. 

The early ExtremeLives logo: bold and formal to match the tone of the episodes.

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Celebrity speakers

With first-hand accounts of the darkest days of ISIS-occupied Raqqa, dispatches from an insider of a network training militants across Asia, and journalists at the front-lines fighting misinformation, ExtremeLives provided a platform for exciting known figures in the Asia region.

Abdulaziz Alhamsa

Co-Founder, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently

Syria

Maria Ressa

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 

The Philippines

Thinzar Shun Lei Yi 

Human Rights Defender

Myanmar

Mossarat Qadeem

Peacebuilder and Academic

Pakistan

Nur Huda Ismail

Activist

Indonesia

early 2019

2019

Rewind

After two years, and with a refocus on prevention, the project wanted to speak more directly youth under the age of 30 who might be affected by extremism in different ways. The ExtremeLives project therefore began to expand its workflow. In addition to the talk-show style interviews, the team began experimenting with different voices and channels to speak more directly to youth. YouTube was identified as a new area of interest.

Nadir visited Thinzar Shun Lei Yi who had appeared in ExtremeLives Season 1

The video showed how important cross-cultural friendships can be

In 2019, the project collaborated with YouTube creator Nadir Nadhi on a 'vlogumentary', or video-blog documentary, providing youth with an intimate insight into the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and how some were continuing to nurture important friendships despite social, cultural or religious differences.

With over 34,000 organic views, the audience reception of the video marked a seismic shift in the ExtremeLives project in the years to come.

Watch it below.